Online sales as a proportion of all UK retail is over 25% (Office for National Statistics), and the number of users is expected to amount to 54.8 million by 2025 (Statista), so having a solid eCommerce site has never been more valuable. 

ECommerce sites provide the opportunity to create a personal, unique shopping experience with huge reach. They are also an opportunity to strengthen your brand proposition through its presentation and the user experience. 

Shopify is a commerce platform that enables you to easily build a site to sell your products to customers from all around the world. It’s our solution of choice for bespoke, small-to-medium eCommerce sites. Whilst it can be a one-stop-shop solution for many, we find its flexibility and powerful underpinnings extremely valuable to build upon. 

The platform is extremely easy to use and administer, has a large range of features including but not limited to; fraud protection, extensive customer support, analytics about your sales, integrated hosting, a clear (international) payment system and a huge number of apps that you can easily add to your site, covering just about any feature you would need. 

Overall, Shopify is an extremely robust, flexible and where needed powerful platform to design, build and customise.

McKee

Pete McKee is an art icon here in our native Sheffield, almost every house has a painting of his, and there are murals around public spaces in the city. Back in 2014 we built McKee a simple Shopify site – a ‘my first webstore’. Focussing purely on selling his art the platform held up incredibly well, his limited editions frequently sell out within hours of being released, especially his collaborations with the Teenage Cancer Trust. As his stature (and shop income) grew it came time to replace his store with something larger; both in scale and in sophistication to match his brand. We built a whole new ‘brand’ site to allow him to explore and enter new markets. The shop remained the economic juggernaut of the business and we retained Shopify as the core, creating a look and feel just right for showcasing McKee’s distinct style, whilst improving the user experience for customers internationally.

petemckee.com

Alexandra Miro

We rebuilt Alexandra Miro’s successful eCommerce site in Shopify in 2020. Originally the site used WooCommerce, which was difficult to manage and didn’t provide easy access to sales reports. Due to the site being built in WordPress, the store owner was responsible for the running of the site, taking away valuable time which could be spent elsewhere on building the business. The site also didn’t handle international orders very well, which was a key demographic of sales. 

Shopify was the clear solution to all of these issues. We were able to design a bespoke series of templates to meet users’ needs and Miro’s creative aspirations. Using Shopify, we could create categories and collections for Miro’s products, set up analytics to allow sales statistics to be tracked and apply Miro’s already established luxury branding throughout the front-end. 

35% of Shopify traffic comes from international customers (Shopify) so they’re no stranger to handling global sales. Using built-in Shopify tools and other apps that are easily added to the site we enabled currency conversion and streamlined shipping. It’s been a great success, with the returning customer rate increasing by 58% in the past 6 months.

alexandramiro.com

Minifigs

In 2016 we began working with Minifigs, who craft delightful custom mini LEGO figures based here in Sheffield.

Initially, we worked with them to continue the development of their existing site which was a WordPress site with WooCommerce integration. Whilst this was the best option at the time, as the site and business grew it proved hard to maintain and not as stable as it should have been. Therefore, the site was migrated to Shopify in 2019. 

The move enabled us to build a platform that required less maintenance and less downtime of some or all of its parts, to create a faster user experience which has resulted in increased sales. The number of sessions has increased by 29% in 2021 vs 2020, and with conversion rate and average order value both up by 11% in 2021 vs 2020 it’s clear that not only are more customers visiting the store, but more customers are buying, and buying even more products.

minifigs.me

However, building a successful Shopify store isn’t just about uploading your products to a website. Using our well-established strategy, we are able to adapt Shopify to create bespoke sites and solutions. We believe that having an in-depth discovery phase is key, researching your customer base, learning about who they are and how they use your website through various analytics tools to create user journeys. We dig out information such as:

• Which pages do people arrive on the site on  — is it the home page, a category page, or a product page?
• Do people move around the site a lot? Do they generally just buy one thing or things from different sections of the site? 
• Once people have selected their products, do they go smoothly through the Checkout process? 
• What pages do people end their user journey on?

We understand that you know your customer base more than anyone, so we also have sessions with you to see if the statistics we’ve collected fit what you expected and if there are any customers missing that you expected to see, and if there’s anything your customers commonly raise. 

We then look at your products from the perspective of your customers. We begin by simply ensuring that your products have meaningful descriptions, does it include dimensions and an idea of what sets this product apart from the rest; what might your particular customers value in the product? Having great images is a must, they should convey what the product will be like when it arrives, and how it will fit into and enhance the customer’s life. 

Products aren’t enough just on their own though, they need to be organised into categories so that customers can find the items they want with ease. We can work with you to categorise your products, and order them so that they make more sense (On minifigs.me we re-organised over 1,300 products into more user intuitive categories). We’ll also use analytics to decide which products should be featured on the front page of your store, increasing your revenue.

Through our focus on discovery, user journeys, technical infrastructure, workflows and business strategy, communications and more we’ve built many successful stores in Shopify, each tailored to our client’s business needs. To this day clients such as MiniFigs are still seeing their sales grow, with a 48% increase in 2021 vs 2020.

If you have an eCommerce site that you think we can help you with, we are always happy to chat! Please drop us a message at info@joipolloi.com.

To keep in the loop on our projects, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn.

What a year 2021 was. From virtual festivals to interactive tours, websites to installations, we’ve been nothing but busy here at team Joi Polloi. 

Our past year was one of growth and learning, of producing exceptional results for clients, adapting to new ways of working, innovating, delivering and always being there for each other as a team.

In 2022 we will continue to help clients pivot and adapt to both challenging and continuously changing circumstances. Our focus will be to use technology to facilitate storytelling, reach audiences, engage, entertain and educate. 

We don’t yet know what 2022 will bring, but we are excited to meet the challenges and opportunities head-on.

Highlights from 2021

The Big Book Review – Online Survey

We worked with the University of Wolverhampton to build a site that will help them complete the largest ever survey of recently published novels.

People choose to read for all sorts of reasons and the Big Book Review is designed to learn more about the decisions that readers make. All you have to do is give your opinion about novels published in the last six years and you’ll be given personalised reading recommendations from both the experts at the University of Wolverhampton and from an AI robot we call ‘Bibliobot’. Who will you trust?

Try it for yourself! Rate books and get reading recommendations at survey.bigbookreview.co.uk

4Talks – Events Platform

In October, we launched Channel 4’s brand new 4Talks site, built by us here at team Joi Polloi. Facilitated by 4Sales, 4Talks is a thought leadership platform that allows speakers to talk about challenging and thought-provoking topics in the advertising community. Topics such as racism, homophobia and other issues which we need to talk more about.

We looked to create a platform where the 4Talks brand can continue to develop and cement 4Talks as thought-leaders, allowing them to grow their user engagement across the advertising community – provoking discussions and making a change. 

Check it out for yourself at 4talks.co.uk

Sheffield Hallam University – Guest Lecturing

Our Lead Designer James and our Production Coordinator Zoe went over to Sheffield Hallam University in October to deliver a few sessions to the first-year students on the Digital Media Production course. They gave talks on their experience in the industry and how we approach UX and UI design.

The students were working on a brief for an app that aims ‘to make the world a better place’ and there were some fantastic ideas being worked on. The experience was especially surreal for Zoe as the brief that the students were focusing on was one that she herself was set by Joi Polloi in her first-ever semester at university three years ago, and now here she is, working as a Production Coordinator at Joi Polloi, getting to hear all about the great ideas that the students have!

We love working with the wonderful team at Hallam and look forward to continuing this in the future.

Imperial War Museum – Installation

Over 2021 we worked with the Imperial War Museum to create an installation as part of their new Second World War and The Holocaust Galleries.

The installation uses a combination of carefully curated video projection, emotive sound and expert design to introduce you to eight stories drawn from partners across the UK. Like all of our projects, there was also a clear focus on accessibility, with the installation including sign language and braille.

Check out a preview of the incredible new galleries (which have been nearly six years in the making!) at IWM’s website. 

Change Makers! – a platform for youth engagement on current issues

In November, we launched ‘Change Makers!’. Developed as part of a follow on funding project with XR Stories, Change Makers is a pilot project for the Yorkshire region that gave local young people the opportunity to write content on topics they were passionate about, using academics at the University of Huddersfield to advise on youth engagement.

The aspiration of Change Makers is not only to enable young people to educate themselves on the issues which mean most to them through the experiences and opinions of their peers, but to provide them with the connections, resources and information they need to focus their efforts on making change happen which benefits everybody.

Take a look at change-maker.co.uk

Hadrian’s Wall – 1900 Festival Website

We’re currently working with The Hadrian’s Wall Partnership to create a brand new website to proudly showcase one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, but more urgently they needed a presence for the upcoming year-long 1900 Festival, celebrating 1900 years since the building of Hadrian’s wall. 

Using rapid wireframing and continuous iterative development we were able to build a new CMS that provides the foundation of a flexible events platform that will grow with the festival throughout the year.  

Learn more about the year-long festival at 1900.hadrianswallcountry.co.uk

Upcoming in 2022

BBC100 – Interactive Timeline

2022 marks 100 years since the BBC began and as part of the centenary celebrations we worked with the BBC History team to create an interactive landing page to be used as a content hub for the #BBC100 campaign. 

Featuring an interactive timeline, users can scroll through to see some of the most famous objects, faces and voices of the BBC from the past 100 years as well as share their own memories.

Take a trip through time and share your own memories at bbc.co.uk/100

North Lincolnshire Museum – New Website

We’re currently working with North Lincolnshire Museum to build them their very own website. Currently, information about the museum can only be found in a section on the North Lincolnshire Council website. We recognise how important it is for them to have their own space that is bespoke to their needs, so we’ve been building them a custom, easy to use CMS where they can add content about the museum, including innovative ways of communicating what’s on at the museum, mixing permanent displays with their events. Regional museums are often cornerstones of local days out with lots of repeat visits from residents – but they often overlook what’s always on offer in favour of one day events and vice versa. We’ve created a site where each supports the other, helping the museum get the most out of what it does, and the visitor the most out of any trip.

Glasgow Science Centre – Virtual Festivals

With the success of Glasgow Science Centre’s past virtual events (last years festivals having over 38,000 users) we’re excited to be continuing our work with them to deliver three more. ‘Curious About: The Human Body’ will launch at the end of February, and will be a space where the value of the brand and organisation continues to be captured and shared through inviting design that seamlessly pulls together their brand and their content.

Check out the past festivals at curiousabout.glasgowsciencecentre.org

Hadrian’s Wall – Website

After launching the 1900 festival site just before Christmas, we’re looking forward to building on that foundation (no pun intended!)  with the main Hadrian’s Wall Partnership website. Our aspirations for the new site are fitting with one of the UK’s national treasures and although we don’t expect the new site to last 1900 years we do expect to both bring the site up to date and provide a digital home for the wall for many years to come!   

We will kickoff our usual intensive Discovery phase of the project on site with the HWP team in late Jan.

Sheffield Hallam University – Virtual Degree Show

Last year we worked with Sheffield Hallam University to bring their Media, Arts and Communications degree show online. This was a huge success, working in collaboration with the university we wireframed, designed and developed the website – creating a space where students can build their online presence, and where their fantastic work can be displayed and promoted to industry.

This year, the team at Hallam want to develop the site even further. The aim is for the site to become a ‘hub’ for all things Media, Arts and Communications, including regularly-updated News, and overall making the site a hub of ideas and content for recent graduates.

See the current site at hallamlive.co.uk

The University of Sheffield – Events Player

We’re continuing our work with The University of Sheffield as we roll out new features for their Player throughout the year. The site is a growing hub for media content from across the university – videos, podcasts, imagery, exhibits, and events. The project has been a great example of working in an Agile way with a client and has enabled the platform to iterate based on evidence-led feedback.

Check out the current site at player.sheffield.ac.uk

Top Secret

Unfortunately, we can’t tell you everything we are working on at the moment, but what we can say is; we are working with a national broadcast on how best to use their new innovating TV/AR technology, a groundbreaking awards platform is just being scoped, we have several exceptionally exciting museum and heritage projects starting soon, and one of the world’s largest festivals needs a new online home and we’ll be delivering it… to name but a few. 

New Year, New Crew

We’re looking for some fresh faces to join our team!

We’re looking for a full-time Digital Designer (3+ years relevant experience), sound like the sort of thing you’d be good at? Find out more here.

We’re also looking for a full-time Senior Producer (6+ years hands-on digital experience at a senior level). Sound like your cup of tea? Find out more here.

To keep in the loop on our projects, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn.

If you have an idea that you think we can help you with, we are always happy to chat! Please drop us a message at info@joipolloi.com.

We here at Joi Polloi have been reminiscing about our journeys to where we are in our careers today. There’s no ‘right’ way to get into agency, careers aren’t linear. Many go to university with no clear idea of what we want to do afterwards, and many others don’t go to university at all. Often though, you end up gravitating towards something you love, no matter where you started. 

We wanted to tell you a little bit about our career paths so far, both conventional and unconventional.

Andy

I first got into the creative industries when working on Warner Bros games as a fresh faced 17-year-old. This was a continuation of work placement from college. I’m exceptionally grateful to the tutor who placed me at this company, it was a major turning point in my life and career.

After this 9 month stint as a character animator, I went to Scotland Street College for 3 years to study Foundation Art. These were great times amongst wonderful people of all ages and from all walks of life. It exposed me, a young lad with a fairly narrow view of the world to a much broader way of thinking. I know many people from Scotland Street feel the same, it was a unique and exceptional place to be. 

Following Scotland Street I was accepted on to a Design Degree course at university, having been persuaded out of following the path of oils at Bretton Hall. However, I was also offered a position as a junior designer at an agency in Sheffield – accepting that was one of the better decisions I’ve made as the pace and real world learning fast-tracked my career by years. On the first day of this job, I knew I wanted to do ‘this’ over anything else. It felt like it was meant to be, that I’d found the thing that I was good at, and that just happened to be something that I loved doing. 

Mine is most likely an unusual path, in particular from my childhood and education weren’t exactly perfect. However, all career paths will be unique in their own way. 

If anything is guaranteed it’s that nothing will go to plan, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one – quite the opposite. 

This is especially pertinent for those who are ambitious enough to think about starting their own company. To anyone thinking this I would very much encourage you to do so if it feels right – I received this encouragement myself and it’s appreciated to this day. In some ways it will be the hardest thing you’ll ever do – but the rewards, achievements and impact you can make are worth it. 

Andy is the CEO and Founder of Joi Polloi and has been with us since the very beginning – almost 20 years ago!

Russ

I drifted into the industry after doing old linear media (I studied Ba (hons) New Media Production at Bournemouth University). I never really had a ‘this is what I want to do’ moment – I’ve always wanted to make good stuff! After university, I was a developer on a virtual Scalextric Product where you raced cars simultaneously on a track in your bedroom against someone on the other side of the world, which was really fun. I never intended to be what I am today when I set out, but I’ve really enjoyed the tangents my career has taken. It’s never a straight path, so always leave yourself open to opportunity – and take the opportunity when it comes along.

Russ is the Technical Director at Joi Polloi and has been with us since January 2017.

Josh

I went to university to study Mathematical Physics, but dropped out after realising it wasn’t for me. After dropping out I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do so I ended up working as a cinema host at Odeon for a couple of years. In 2018, I decided to go for an interview at Northcoders. It was at their entry interview that I realised this was what I wanted to do. It was a short coding test and after I’d finished I realised how much I’d enjoyed the problems. If I could enjoy coding under interview conditions then I was definitely going to like it as a job! If I could give any advice, it’s that it’s never too late to change paths – I basically changed career paths 3 times in 5 years. If what you’re doing isn’t working for you then it’s always worth looking to see if there’s another path open for you.

Josh is a Developer at Joi Polloi and has been with us since November 2019.

Sian

I originally went to university in 2011 to do an undergrad in Media Studies. After my undergrad, I worked at a local radio station as a scheduling assistant and on the events team, followed by a couple of different jobs unrelated to my degree. I saved up some money and went travelling for a year as I was still unsure what to do next career-wise. I then decided to do a masters in Digital Media Management in 2018. I’ve always had an interest in digital/tech and getting into the creative industry. Studying for my masters cemented this even more so as I was able to explore different roles and discover routes into the industry. My suggestion is to get out there and experience new things, meet new people, make new contacts and don’t put pressure on yourself to land your dream drop ASAP after uni!

Sian is a Producer at Joi Polloi and has been with us since July 2018.

Renata

I studied Physics and Philosophy at university, and after my degree I went on to be an editor at Pergamon Press in Oxford, working on scientific journals – so not really related to the digital industry! I first got involved with the industry when I worked in book publishing. I did this for quite a few years – there was a creative element to it in that I was often involved in book cover designs and also the internal page layouts. I never really had a ‘this is what I want to do’ moment. Instead, I have put my creativity into my hobbies, such as painting, drawing and making animations. Joi Polloi is the first time I have worked in a creative industry, so I feel very lucky to have got the opportunity! I think if you want to be creative, then go ahead and make things and have fun – do things that give you pleasure.

Renata is a Senior Producer at Joi Polloi and has been with us since May 2021.

Matt

I went to university in 2010 to study Law, but quickly realised that it wasn’t for me. Pretty much as soon as I finished university I got a job with Brad (another one of our developers) working for a web agency in Canada. I enjoyed this a lot more than law. Web development, the whole agency lifestyle and the people that work in technology are a lot more personable (in my experience). If I could give any advice I would just say that networking is key, after all it’s not always what you know…

Matt is a Developer at Joi Polloi and has been with us since June 2018.

From September 10th-19th thousands of volunteers across the UK invite you to experience local history, architecture and culture all for free for the UK Heritage open days. At Joi Polloi we do lots of interesting projects within the heritage and culture sector, and we wanted to show you some behind the scenes of the surprising things we’ve been working on with Wentworth Woodhouse.

We’ve been working in partnership with Wentworth Woodhouse, a stately home in Rotherham, to create a virtual tour of the house, and an augmented reality game for kids called ‘Hide and Find’. The virtual tours enable you to explore a range of different aspects of Wentworth from the comfort of a computer, with a video of a tour guide to take you round the various rooms.

Secret Rooms

After our initial research, we were invited to see the hidden parts of Wentworth, to explore how we could make these accessible to the public through virtual tours.

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Hidden Gems

We were also invited to explore future ideas and concepts, where we went for a look round their stables, which are not usually accessible to the public.

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Virtual Tour Guides

Virtual tours need a virtual tour guide! We filmed a guided history of the house which we could put into the tours.

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A New Way of Exploring

Having the tours of the house made virtual opens a lot of doors for Wentworth and it’s visitors. You’re now able to visit the house through technology no matter how far away you live, plus it means the house is now fully accessible for the elderly and anyone with mobility difficulties. The virtual tours will also make it possible for the public to visit never before seen areas of UK heritage, gaining a different perspective of the buildings we know and love, and exploring new places they might never have been without virtual tours.

At Joi Polloi, doing good is at the core of everything.

Most obviously this manifests itself in making excellent work, but it’s not just what you do, it’s how and why you do it.

We wanted to share a bit about some of the work we do that tries to help people and places.

Helping out locally

We started working with The Children’s Hospital Charity, the fund-raising arm of Sheffield Children’s Hospital, back in 2015 when we did a new design and build of their main website, and it’s been a fantastic relationship ever since. Sheffield is very lucky to have the Children’s Hospital and it’s a critical institution for the city. Working with their fundraising team has been a great experience and to help get them up and running we provided the foundation stages of the project as an in-kind donation. Ever since the site launched we have been hosting it for free and have continued to work with them to see it flourish and grow – raising more and more money for their vital services. Working with local non-profit organisations is important to us because the work they do in Sheffield and South Yorkshire has a huge positive impact on the community, massively improving the lives of those of us that live in Sheffield.

Working with youth groups

In August 2020 we won funding for three projects as part of XR Stories – Young Audience Funds. The fund aims to champion ambitious projects exploring new ways of engaging young people, such as through immersive content that uses new, exciting technologies. It’s a fund we couldn’t wait to get involved in, keeping young people engaged in social issues is a challenge we were eager to face as it’s an issue that affects all of us. Our first successful submission was for the project Change Makers! which we began developing in April this year

Our aim with Change Makers! is to inspire young people between the ages of 11 and 16 to promote social and political change through education, advocacy, inspiration and support from their peers and decision-makers around the country. The platform provides a safe space where young people can learn about and discuss issues that interest and affect them. Promoting youth voices, users can engage with the web platform to express their views and debate with other young people. Creating a safe space where young people can express their views, without the often divisive tactics seen on social media, allows them to have a voice while they’re still learning and discovering, and keeps young people engaged in the issues they care about.

We worked with an internationally-recognised expert in youth citizenship, Dr Andrew Mycock of the University of Huddersfield, to research how to bridge the gap between engagement and activism. This research enabled us to create a platform that not only empowers young people, but is a unique resource which acts as an engagement facilitator, helping to ensure that activities undertaken by the young people are presented to policymakers and elected representatives.

Internships and collaborating with The University of Sheffield

We’ve been doing some inspiring work with The University of Sheffield recently; not only have we collaborated to turn their biennial Festival of the Mind into an online experience, we’ve also built interactive exhibits in partnership with academics, allowing a better public understanding of research and schools of thought. We love having the opportunity to collaborate with the university as it’s important that everyone gets to celebrate and appreciate the great work that they do.

We’ve also been able to extend that further by taking on an intern as part of the University’s TAP exchange programme. This is a two way opportunity; a student from the university joins us, we show them how we work, and in exchange they bring fresh thinking and perspectives. Engaging students in industry is important to us, it provides a new perspective, allowing them to build on their skills in a professional environment which prepares them for industry in a way that studying alone cannot always provide.

One of the themes of the scheme was placemaking, and it’s been great to bring our client, Wentworth Woodhouse, into this, who have provided a fantastic resource for Scott, our intern, to get his hands dirty with their archive.

Apprenticeships

We love having apprentices in Team Joi. It’s fantastic to have a mixture of skills and experience within the team, creating a healthy mix of opinions and viewpoints. Plus, it’s great to support mobility for people on their own career ladder. We’re also aware that as a smaller agency it’s always a danger that we can become a bit closed off from the outside world, and create a feeling of nothing changing – so apprenticeships are a great solution to this. The scheme is brilliant for us as a company and the apprentice as we both gain so much from the experience.
Through Baltic Apprenticeships, we’ve welcomed Declan to our Developers’ team. He started at Newcastle University studying Mechanical Engineering but shortly changed to Sheffield Hallam University to study Computer Science for two years. After a change in direction, he wanted to kickstart his career and signed up for the Baltic Apprenticeship scheme. This scheme gives you a year within the industry with tons of training and real industry experience. So far he’s been working on projects such as the Great British Bake Off, Channel 4, and The Children’s Hospital Charity – so many exciting high-profile projects to get stuck into!

“I’ve really enjoyed getting stuck in with the software developer role and tackling real world problems. It’s been great to experience working in a professional environment as well.”
– Declan Allen, Developer at Joi Polloi

Our work with non-profit organisations, universities, our apprentices and interns all means a lot to us. It’s great to be able to create work that is not only innovative and exciting, but also does good. If you’re a non-profit organisation that has an idea or thinks that we’d work well together, get in touch! Call us at 0114 30 30 100 or drop us an email at info@joipolloi.com​​.

Back to Normality

In 2020, we proved that we could adapt and deliver innovative, exciting projects no matter the challenges and uncertainties we faced – and in 2021 we’ve continued to do exactly this. As restrictions have progressively lifted throughout the year, we’ve been busy hiring new members of Team Joi, launching new projects and even moving into our new office in Kelham Island (Little Kelham to be precise!).

Team Joi Has Been Growing

We’ve greeted many new faces in the office over the last couple of months across both the producer and developer teams. Bringing more skills and creatives into the company has been incredible for Team Joi. We have lots of exciting team building exercises planned for the next couple of weeks to get our team back together.

We started off the year being joined by a new lead designer, James Briggs. James has over 10 years in the industry and has worked across a range of clients from First Direct and Yorkshire Water to Castrol and Welcome to Yorkshire. He decided to become a part of Team Joi because “I was ready to push myself to the next level and Joi Polloi was the right place to do that. It’s been fantastic collaborating with a team that constantly pushes creativity in digital”. He’s been a huge asset to Team Joi and has already worked across various projects including The Imperial War Museum, the BBC and The Children’s Hospital Charity in Sheffield.

Declan Allen is our newest member of the development team, joining us after signing up for the Baltic Apprenticeship scheme. This scheme gives successful applicants a year within the industry with tonnes of training and real industry experience. He’s currently working on various projects, shadowing developers on work for Love Productions, Channel 4 and others.

We’ve also had lots of new faces join the producer team too; Renata Corbani, James Welbourn (another James, yes this can be confusing) and Zoe Roberts. Renata is a Senior Producer who has worked in the healthcare field for several years; she chose to become a part of Team Joi because “the projects are really interesting and varied and it is great to be part of a team that is constantly pushing boundaries”. James has recently moved back to Sheffield after living in Australia for the last 12 years. During his time in Australia he spent 5 years at the Australian Broadcast Corporation as a Digital Product Manager (for kids’ apps and games) as well as a variety of digital production roles at global agencies such as AKQA, Avanade and M&C Saatchi – “Who knew my dream role was waiting for me here in my beautiful hometown of Sheffield!”. Our newest member of the team is Zoe, who graduated from Sheffield Hallam University this year with a first class degree in Digital Media Production. Zoe impressed us with her skills across design and content production and is now working as a Production Coordinator, where she is doing a mixture of social media management, project management, video editing and more.

Our Latest Projects

We’ve already released lots of interesting projects this year, across various areas of the industry from online festivals and e-commerce websites to interactive tours and more! 

Working closely with Glasgow Science Centre, we’ve helped to move their recent festivals ‘Curious About: Our Planet’ and ‘Curious About: Innovation’ online. They were a huge success, with the recent festivals having over 38,365 users. Our aim was to recreate the sense of place you get when you go out to a festival, in an online environment. We achieved this through inviting design, seamlessly pulling together their brand and their content. Where in-person meetings were not possible, we created a space where the value of the brand and organisation were captured and shared in moments of extreme challenge. ‘Curious About: Our Planet’ was aimed at celebrating the diversity of the planet and the dangers it currently faces, engaging children with online live events and interactive content, giving them the much needed face-to-face interaction with science experts that lockdown had made difficult to achieve. We had many thousands of visits to the Curious About: Our Planet site during our three ‘live’ festival days and the number of visitors only increased from when the site launched to the end of the festival. There were 10 live event Q&A sessions and a live family quiz. The event hosted over 86 pages of content from Glasgow Science Centre and 36 partners.

The luxury fashion designer Alexandra Miro approached us back in February 2020 with the intention of giving her website a full makeover due to the increasing success of her brand over the last 3 years. Unfortunately, plans were put on hold for the rest of the year because of the pandemic, but after picking this back up at the start of the year the project began rolling again in the studio. The original site was built in WordPress with a WooCommerce plugin as this was performing exceptionally well. However, after a fantastic turnover for their third year, Alexandra wanted to expand to a more powerful, reliable and easy to use platform – Shopify. After migrating one of our long-term clients, MiniFigs, onto Shopify back in 2016, we knew it would definitely be a good development for the brand. In addition to migrating the brand onto Shopify, we focused on the presentation of the brand. We concentrated on designing a site that is as luxurious as the swimwear collections themselves, not only to entice the audience but also to secure better conversion rates in order to achieve increased sales – and it shows. Over the past 4 months the website has been a huge success, with a 161.20% increase in revenue compared to the previous year. 

“Your team has done such a fantastic job with the website. I’m totally thrilled with the end result. I really appreciate all the work that has been done and look forward to a long partnership with Joi Polloi.”
– Alexandra Miro

In June, we launched the Doc/Fest 2021 website. New festival Director Cíntia Gil had a clear vision for a new feel to the festival. To deliver, we coordinated across several parties, working closely with the great Doc/Fest team, branding agency Regular Practice and Fiona (a Festival Management system). Our challenge was to capture and communicate the festival effectively, translating the new brand into a fresh digital landscape with huge potential, giving strong focus to the user interface and experience of the festival, resulting in phenomenal design and presentation.

Our work started running in early January, with the re-brand starting just ahead of that. The key for us was communication: maintaining conversations, clarity and progress on all fronts with all parties. We worked in collaboration with the client to ensure the design of the website gives a true sense of place for the event that is usually in person by creating a bespoke front end design. This design serves not only to make the audience’s journey seamless, but to maintain the brand’s value in the longer term. We were able to connect with the worldwide audience by creating something that could be enjoyed by everyone, adhering to accessibility standards whilst delivering the festival’s incredible content in an engaging way, for both online and offline events.

Integrating our bespoke front end design into the third party system Fiona was a collaborative effort, one that we have undertaken many times and that we hope to continue in the future. The system hugely improved the workflow of the staff as the site would automatically update to match their programming of the festival. We went the extra mile to integrate with Fiona, creating a reusable system that pulls through information to populate the website, including the listings and the schedule. It’s important in the hustle and bustle of organising a festival to have a single point of truth that updates everything and the site does just that.

Our Production Coordinator, Chloé, worked with her former lecturers from Sheffield Hallam University to develop a website to showcase the graduates’ work. In collaboration with the university, we wireframed, designed and developed the website – creating a space where all of the fantastic work made by Hallam’s Media, Arts and Communication students could be displayed. The site we built gives each student their own page, a space to build their online presence that they can use to promote their work to industry. We have a great relationship with Sheffield Hallam University, with many of Team Joi graduating from the university in the past, as well as helping to create modules within the Media, Arts and Communications department and guest speaking. Whilst our main aim was to get the degree show off the ground, we built the site so that it can be updated regularly by the team at Sheffield Hallam in the future, used as a space to update everyone on the successes of the course, informing people on what the department is doing and how they’re getting their students involved in industry.

“I was extremely pleased and happy with what you’ve done. Not just 10/10, but more than 10/10 because it was a really good experience overall. I’m really excited to see what happens next year.”
– Anne Doncaster, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Production at Sheffield Hallam University

The Rap Game UK returned for a third season on BBC3 in July, and BBC Creative wanted to continue to help up-and-coming rappers from across the UK be a part of the scene by submitting their videos to The Rap Map – an online map which showcases the variety of talent in the rap scene across the UK. The Rap Map first launched alongside season two of The Rap Game UK in 2020, with over one hundred performances submitted. 

For season three we updated some of the features on the map, including bringing the map in line with season three’s branding and implementing a ‘DJ Target Pick of the Week’ functionality that highlights raps that are chosen by DJ Target (and potentially played on his Radio 1Xtra show), enabling rappers to add links to their YouTube and Soundcloud, and to add a share feature so users can share a rapper’s video with their friends with ease.

We’ve worked with BBC Creative previously on projects such as Dear Bob, Sorry Not Sorry and My Glasto Lineup.

After our success working with BBC Creative on the Rap Map, we were recommended to the Countryfile team to help launch their two-year project Plant Britain, a project that aims to combat climate change, help wildlife and improve our own well being. The goal was to plant 750,000 trees in two years as well as planting fruit, vegetables and flowers. BBC Creative came to us to create a digital home for the project, an interactive map that allows users to contribute to the campaign by recording what they have planted on the website. 

We began by having a creative session with the BBC to develop the idea, focusing on the volume of likely entrants, the information that would be captured, the workflow of the team processing it and the longevity of the project. Our main challenge was audience engagement, not only did the website need to have a strong look and feel through both desktop and mobile devices, but it had to deliver well through any visual storytelling that would be featured in the program in order to encourage the audience to take part. The idea of segmenting the map was born, creating a sense of friendly competition between regions and adding a totaliser to emphasise this. Whilst the map has similarities to the Rap Map with it being an interactive map, it differs in that the Plant Map collects mass data. Thanks to the map, the campaign was a huge success, reaching over a million entries within seven months.

What’s next?

But it doesn’t stop there! We have even more intriguing and innovative projects that we’re working on at the moment set to launch in the near future…

In August last year we won funding for three projects as part of XR Stories – Young Audience Funds. The fund aims to explore concepts that will enrich and inspire young audiences using cutting edge technologies in the creation of immersive content. Winning this funding was fantastic for Joi Polloi as it gave us a good opportunity to experiment with new digital content ideas for young audiences, as well as new and exciting technology. 

We began creating Change Makers!, our first successful submission, in April this year. Users can engage with the web platform to express their views and debate with other young people in a way that is natural and nurturing and creates new journalism content written from their perspective. When launched, the platform will be a unique resource that will act as an engagement facilitator, ensuring that activities undertaken are presented to policymakers and elected representatives. The goal is to empower young people to understand how and why the world around them works, engage with it, and shape it. 

We also began working with Wentworth Woodhouse in April this year, developing and delivering a suite of digital products for the stately home in Rotherham. JoiPolloi and Field Studio are collaborating to create ‘Hide&Find’, an innovative digital activity which children and families can play on mobile phones, scanning QR codes that are strategically placed in the house’s grand gardens. We have also teamed up with Field to create three virtual tours: The Grand Tour, The Hidden Tour and the Film and TV Tour. The Grand Tour takes viewers round the main rooms of the house – a tour guide highlights the main features in each room as well as giving some historical background  – it is pretty much the same experience you would have if you visited the house in person! Cursors allow you to move around, so viewers can really appreciate the unique features of each room. Plus, we will also deliver a website for Wentworth Woodhouse, which we can’t wait to get stuck into.

“In an unparalleled year of challenges for our business and many others, it’s remarkable that we have continued to innovate and engage with so much success. Of course, the snapshot of projects above doesn’t tell the whole story, how we needed to pivot and adapt, how we critically supported our clients in doing the same. Together we have emerged from a year like no other not only intact, but perhaps stronger and more enthusiastic than ever.”
– Andy Barratt, CEO

If you want to keep up with what we’re doing in the future, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn.

If you have an idea that you think we can help you with, we are always happy to chat! Please drop us a message on info@joipolloi.com.

BBC One Countryfile launched their two-year project Plant Britain to help combat climate change, help wildlife, and improve our well being. The goal is to plant 750,000 trees in two years, and encourage the planting of various fruits, vegetables and flowers as well.

Plant Britain is an interactive map that allows users to contribute to the campaign by recording what they have planted on the website.

Hitting 1 million

After the campaign going live in December 2020, in 7 months we’ve managed to hit 1 million plant entries!

How did this success come about?

We had previously worked with BBC Creative on the successful BBCThree The Rap Map Game UK: Rap Map and were then recommended to the Countryfile team.

BBC Creative came to us with the campaign planned out and wanted a digital home for it, some kind of ‘totaliser’, and some kind of map. They came to the right place. 

What did we do?

Our first task was to have an internal catch-up with the team, brainstorming ideas and how we can deliver a top-level creative approach. This followed a creative session with the BBC Creative team to narrow down and refine the idea slightly into creating a deeper proposal. 

Key was to consider the volume of likely entrants, the information that would be captured, the workflow of the team processing it and the longevity of the project (designed to last a year).

During the design process, one of the vital elements is not only how the website will look and feel through desktop and mobile devices, but how it would deliver the best through the visual storytelling that would be featured on the TV programme.

From several client meetings, we developed the idea of how to segment the map, create a sense of friendly competition between regions and adding the big totaliser. Whilst having similarities with the Rap Map in terms of being an interactive map and collecting data from a smaller number of applicants, Plant Map would be essentially be collecting ‘mass data’.

In terms of the development, the first task was to investigate the following:

• Backend data capture and storage
• Front end map interface
• Data display

During the development process, this took a flexible lightweight approach using the dynamic building to allow us to be very flexible with the build, we wrote a blog post about our approach to this using AWS amplify. We then set it up to be able to simulate data building up, which we used to create stock footage to be broadcast on Countryfile.

How did Team Joi get involved?

It’s been incredible to be a part of this journey and to know that our contribution is going towards combating climate change and improving the well-being of others. We didn’t stop there, here at Joi Polloi we jumped at the opportunity to get on board with the campaign and started ‘TeamJoiGetPlanting’.

Over the last 6 months, TeamJoi wanted to get involved with the two-year project of the plant map and we decided to make this a small team project. First, we all decided what plants we would like to plant and then from this, our team started sending progression images. 

From flowers, trees, vegetables and fruits, our team were planting ridiculous amounts of plants. This was a small project that had taken place during the lockdown and improved the wellbeing of the team.

The campaign doesn’t stop there, if you want to get involve and plant your own plants, please do at PlantBritain.co.uk.

2020 and the ongoing effects of the pandemic meant that companies and organisations had to radically rethink their relationships with customers and clients. Nowhere was this more evident than in the field of education where, for a time, schools closed and with them so did opportunities for new experiences, such as school trips.  Many parents have suddenly had to teach their children, and scrabble around to create lessons, and interpret the curriculum for their child(ren).

Adapting to online learning during the pandemic has offered organisations the opportunity to create new ways of engaging with their audiences.  As most physical events became online-only there was a need to create platforms and content which could keep children and young people engaged.  Glasgow Science Centre took this opportunity to connect with people who could not visit their physical sites and festivals by creating their first online festival with the help of Joi Polloi. 

‘Curious About Our Planet’ was aimed at celebrating the diversity of the planet and the dangers it currently faces, engaging children with online live events and interactive content, giving them the much needed face-to-face interaction with science experts. 

What were your original intentions for starting the festivals and where did the idea come from?

 In March 2020, when it became clear that due to the COVID-19 pandemic the science centre would have to close to visitors for an extended period of time, we were faced with the challenge of finding a space where we could engage and stay relevant to and in the minds of our audiences. We were fortunate enough to be able to turn to producing a daily series of short entertaining and educational science videos that we called ‘GSC At Home‘. 

These ‘GSC At Home’ videos were presented by our team of science communicators, edited in-house and shared online through our digital channels. We caught the rushing wave for help with home learning and satisfied a near-insatiable demand for things for parents and their children could do at home or outdoors during lockdown. We found ourselves in the amazing position of being able to broadcast GSC directly into the homes of our existing and new audiences across the UK and beyond. The reaction from children, their parents and carers was astounding. Every day our social media channels were full of pictures of at-home science experiments and follow up questions about space, photosynthesis and lava. We’ve had well over 1M views of the 100+ videos that make the series, received fantastic feedback from families, schools, and stakeholders – and even won numerous awards and recognition for the series including ‘Best Video Content Campaign of the Year’ at the UK Content Awards.

We started to realise that if we could do that, then we could evolve and also reach into schools and other community spaces too with high quality experiences that were also reflective of the experience you’d get if you were visiting the science centre in person.  Since GSC At Home, we’ve developed GSC Learning Lab – a full suite of immersive education resources that are delivered digitally to schools and have that unique ‘Glasgow Science Centre’ twist to them.

Can you tell us about the success of the first festival?

Like all new things, there’s always some doubt as to whether or not we can actually deliver what we said we’d deliver! But, we really did exceed our expectations with Curious About: Our Planet. 

Our incredible team worked hard over several months to bring together the direction and content for the festival. A huge amount of work goes into creating and marketing a festival and this was certainly a learning curve for us taking a festival online. The team at Joi Polloi have been absolutely tremendous at supporting us and helping to shape and deliver the festival through such an immersive digital platform. 

We had over 11,000 visits to the Curious About: Our Planet site during our three ‘live’ festival days and more than 17,000 visits overall from when the site launched to the end of the festival period. There were 10 live event Q&A sessions and a live family quiz. The event hosted over 86 pages of content from GSC and 36 partners. Phew!

We’ve popped this down in our records as a success and it’s spurred us on to more, including our latest iteration Curious About: Innovation which has another 3 days of live events running 19 to 21 May.

What do you feel you have learnt from the online festivals?

 A lot. We’ve learnt we can do them. It takes a lot of effort and coordination, but just as in the real world, if you invest in online and have the human commitment and passion to deliver then you can. You have to work hard to capture attention amongst the digital noise and then retain that attention with content and a festival community that is relevant and engaging to the audience. 

How has the pandemic impacted GSC and has it changed your plans for the future?

The pandemic has really shaken up our approach and awareness of how we tackle ‘digital’ science experiences. We understand better the potential and its limitations. It’s accelerated our learning in this area and there’s no going back now. As we move forward digital has a major part to play in the offer from the science centre, helping us raise our profile, reach existing and new audiences, and inspire people with science and technology.

Joi Polloi have relished the opportunity to put our experience of working in the museum and heritage sector to use by creating an online festival platform which enables audiences of all ages to engage with and feel part of events even though they are not currently taking place in physical spaces.  It has enabled us to think about how audiences consume and interact with online content. Please get in touch if you’d like to talk to us about how we can help you.

Minifigs have been a client of ours for the last 5 years and they’ve been such a pleasure to work with, we’ve watched their company grow and been the helping hand for their digital presence across their website. Minifigs have been so kind as to answer a few of our questions on how they’ve grown as a company, what this past year has been like for them and how we have impacted their growth.

How did the company start and how did you used to operate?

“Minifigs.me was founded by Nick and Caroline Savage, husband and wife team and long-term LEGO fans. We make custom Minifigures by creating designs using illustration software and printing them onto genuine LEGO Minifigure parts. 

It’s hard to say exactly when the company started, but we generally consider it was August 2012 when we found ourselves very suddenly going from a part-time hobby to a full-time job. We had re-created some 2012 Olympic and Paralympic athletes as Minifigures and we had made it into the national press. That was a huge turning point! 

After that, requests for custom Minifigures started flooding in via email and we realised we needed to organise a website. We started with a WordPress website that Nick had built himself. Over time, we got professional help from Joi Polloi to tweak the website and later added the ‘Minifig Builder’ – a custom-built part of the website which allows people to choose the best head, hair, torso, legs and accessories to make their very own unique Minifigure all in one place.” 

How do things operate now in comparison to before?

“We started with just the two of us, working all hours out of our garage. We gradually got busier and busier, with more and more orders coming through. Over time, we realised we couldn’t do it alone any longer and so we started to hire people to help us. 

A couple of years ago, we made the leap from WordPress to Shopify, with Joi Polloi organising the move and porting everything across to the new website. We had ‘made do’ with the WordPress site, but it became more and more obvious that we needed a platform more suited to commerce.

Our processes changed over time too. We used to print onto decals (or stickers), which were stuck onto the Minifigures. Nowadays, we have multiple printers which we use to print directly onto the LEGO pieces. We have a really efficient workflow, with different staff members in specialised roles. We also moved out of the garage, and into a proper office/workshop!”

How has the last year been different from the pandemic?

“Of course, there have been problems linked to the pandemic. Most of our staff are working from home at the moment, and only having a skeleton crew in the workshop does make things more difficult. There have also been shipping delays due to the pandemic and this affects how quickly orders arrive with customers, but most of them have been very understanding about this. 

All in all, though, we’ve been very lucky. We’re aware that some people have lost loved ones or have been hit really hard financially. We’re also aware that many businesses have folded, or at least have had to make huge adaptations to how they work in order to continue operating. 

In our case, as we sell everything online, we haven’t had to change too much. We can carry on sending out orders as usual and, if anything, we’ve seen an increase in orders as more people seem to be at home and shopping online more.”

What were your original plans for 2020?

“The aim has always been to keep growing the company at a manageable rate. We don’t want to grow too quickly and struggle to meet demand. We want to keep great quality products and great customer service. This year, we’ve grown faster than expected. It’s all very exciting, and we’re now again at the stage of thinking about hiring more staff.”

“We’ve been growing roughly 25% year on year, with additional spikes related to events going on in the world!”

Reaching out to the wholesale customers – was this a sales strategy or did this happen organically?

“To be honest, it just happened. A company got in touch and asked about ordering a lot from us, so it just sprang up from there.  It works well for everyone – we get regular large orders, they get something unusual to sell in their stores and the customer gets to buy something locally that would have otherwise been shipped halfway across the world, just for them.  We still sell directly to the states, but it’s nice to have some bricks and mortar help over there!”

Working alongside Joi Polloi, how has this affected your company? 

“Working alongside Joi Polloi has been great. There are always tweaks and adaptations we need to make to the website, and Joi Polloi is there to offer a guiding hand and do the practical work of making the changes. We offer lots of different things on our website, and it’s always been a challenge to present it all to customers in a way that makes sense to them. We have such a huge variety of products and personalisation options, and we’re constantly trying to find ways to keep it well organised and make it accessible. It’s a real challenge, and it’s great having Joi Polloi’s input on this. We certainly couldn’t have done it alone!”

Any top tips for a successful e-commerce store?

“We offer products which are really fun and which make people smile. We have genuine excitement about the products we are making, and we think that enthusiasm comes across to the customers too. 

In a practical sense, there are loads of different things to consider when creating and maintaining an e-commerce store and we are still constantly learning new things.

One thing we’re focussing on at the moment is trying to see how the website looks and feels to someone who is unfamiliar with the site. Placing orders ourselves and trying to see the site through fresh eyes has helped us to identify lots of little issues that we can now work on solving. This seems like a good tip for anyone with an e-commerce store!”

Developing best practices

Amplify is a toolset which leverages a variety of AWS cloud services in order to quickly and easily build scalable web applications.

We’ve recently used Amplify to build and host an interactive map for the BBC’s Countryfile Plant Britain campaign, “an ambitious two-year challenge aimed at galvanising everyone in the nation to get planting – no matter where you live or how large or tiny a space you may have – to help combat climate change and at the same time, boost our wellbeing and wildlife”.

Whilst this is a relatively small application, it does have to scale to sufficiently cope with a significant amount of users in a short space of time. Alongside this, we aimed to have data updates in real-time as and when users submit their plantings, this translates to areas of the map rising from the canvas. Amplify was an ideal choice, with it’s scalable infrastructure and AppSync data subscriptions.

There are many articles detailing the wonders of Amplify and how easy it is to hit the ground running with a fully fledged application, with all the bells and whistles in a mere few minutes.

I cannot argue with that premise, the Amplify CLI enables you to build a robust application very quickly indeed.

However, very few write-ups really transcend the realm of example To-do and Note applications.

In this post, I aim to touch on some of the trials and tribulations we’ve encountered whilst building our first production application with Amplify.

First and foremost, Authentication

Amplify add auth

Authentication is the very first step in the process, as it sits on top of all operations. It is the glue binding the application together.

The amplify add auth method and underlying Cognito service provides a few Authentication implementation options regarding user registration, authentication, account recovery and other operations.

Additional authentication specific configurations are also found within other aspects of the app, such as the API, which we’ll get into later on.

One of the stumbling blocks we’ve hit with regards to the Amplify CLI is specifically related to the Authentication configuration, and more specifically, updating this over time as the dynamic nature of agile application development presented itself.

Initially, we created the Authentication without knowing exactly which options we’d like to have. 

For instance, multi-factor authentication (MFA) was disabled.

Little did we know at the time, we couldn’t simply enable the MFA required option via the Amplify update auth CLI method…

This is because the underlying Cognito service does not allow it. You can only choose ‘required’ when initially creating a user pool.

TAKE AWAY: If you’re considering using MFA, decide upfront and add it in the initial build

Ok, fair enough… now what? Let’s remove Auth via Amplify remove auth and re-add it again via Amplify add auth

Oh, boy… what is this hell we’ve unleashed upon ourselves? Amplify attempts to update the backend stack via CloudFormation, but fails due to Authentication being a dependency of our API.

This wouldn’t usually be an issue, as more often than not, Amplify will reverse the changes. However, reverting the stack after a failure does sometimes fail more often than I’m comfortable with! It is with this in mind that I learnt to apply caution with every back end configuration change. 

Additionally, I’d only recommend making singular backend stack changes, committing them to source and allowing all environments to catch up (Providing you have your backend built via source control). A chained list of updates often does fail, perhaps because there’s no specific order of priority whilst the CloudFormation process churns away, leading to all manner of issues… Orphaned IAM Policies, S3 buckets and other such resources end up intrinsically linked in such a way as to confuse the process.

The above is true for all aspects of the Amplify CLI and Amplify push method… keep changes to a minimum and sync them to the backend stack asap!

TAKE AWAY: If you’re going to update the backend stack, do it one change at a time.

Another issue we’d found was that only a select few Cognito templates were available within the scope of the Amplify build scripts… we had to use the Cognito UI to add custom email templates etc.

I’ve had to rebuild the entire application stack more times than I’d care to admit as a result of small configuration changes going badly, and it’s only after experiencing what you can, and cannot get away with changing, that you learn the true nature of Amplify’ dependency hell.

TAKE AWAY: Amplify CLI categories cannot always be updated in their entirety, and some configuration options are missing.

API (AppSync GraphQL)

I can write this small snippet of a schema and subsequently have all my CRUD interactions built?

Truly, a wonder.  

You’d better get those keys correct on the initial build though! You cannot update the keys of a DynamoDB table after it’s been created via GraphQL. You either end up having to create new keys whilst renaming the old keys, then renaming the new keys back to the old keys… 

or removing the API and starting again, Good fun.

This makes things challenging when you haven’t quite finalised your database design due to evolving requirements, but need to get on with the build.

Keys are quite important, if for instance you want to filter a result set via any of the available fields, you need a sort key for each field… that could be a lot of keys! The alternative is to stream your DynamoDB table to the Elasticsearch service via the @searchable directive in the graphql schema, but we didn’t want the additional overhead.

TAKE AWAY: Creating a DynamoDB table requires you plan out the exact structure of your table first (Even though DynamoDB is schema-less).

API Authentication

During the initial setup, we specified which Authentication type we’d like to use.

In our case, we want to use IAM.

I found the documentation was quite vague in terms of explaining the various authentication types, so here’s a little bit about how IAM auth works:

Authenticated users access resources via Cognito, which uses the IAM Auth user, this user has all of the relevant policies associated with the access you defined in each part of the stack.

Unauthenticated users access resources via an IAM Unauth user, which again has access policies, but often far more limited than the auth user.

This effectively secures your API for all users, whether they’re authenticated or not. 

An Unauthenticated user pool is provisioned within Cognito, alongside the Authenticated user pool.

Coupled with the Amplify JS framework, upon accessing the application, unauthenticated users are granted a Cognito user token which grants them access to the underlying Unauth role, and of course, authenticated users get the Auth role. This prevents direct external access to the API, as all requests must originate from valid user sessions.

With the IAM auth set, we can now protect various aspects of the API on a granular level, using the @auth directive.

@auth(
   rules: [
     { allow: private, provider: iam } , # authenticated users can update, delete,     and read
     { allow: public, provider: iam, operations: [read, create] } # unauthenticated users can read and create
   ]
 )

  

TAKE AWAY: IAM accounts work well, but remember public users are treated as unauthenticated accounts.

Perhaps the greatest irritation of all

GraphQL does not have a total count! 

Ok, that’s not entirely correct…

It does have a total count, but it’s often hours out of date as it’s based on a default full table scan operation, which occurs on a schedule. 

In order to calculate the overall total of items in the table you’d have to scan the table in its entirety, which racks up the costs.

You could maintain your own total count, which would require further write operations. Twice whatever your existing rate is.

Either way, it’s not great. Total counts are quite important, especially when paginating through a result set.

TAKE AWAY: DynamoDB (currently) doesn’t seem the most mature of DBs.

Monorepo

Most applications require a back end management interface of some kind, ours was no exception.

As Amplify is geared towards containing the Amplify build scripts / backend stack config and application within a single repository, it makes sense to keep your backend management application in the same place.

This is where the Monorepo came into play.

Whilst the Amplify documentation is generally lacking overall, it was very void of information with Monorepo’ in particular.

To get this functionality, we provisioned two separate Amplify apps from the same Repository source. Within the repository, we had two separate directories containing the Client and Admin applications, each set as the applications build directory, respectively.

The client application was effectively the child of the admin, with the admin containing the amplify configuration and build scripts.

The client contains a script which runs on build, this script utilizes the Amplify CLI to pull the relevant backend configuration files, which point the seperately hosted client at the relevant backend stack.

As this process wasn’t well documented, the steps outlined didn’t work as documented which lead to a frustrated couple of days of lost development time.

Steps to connect a monorepo:

1. Connect the repository to Amplify, select the admin directory and name the application accordingly.
2. Same as 1. But with Client.
3. Within the Client Amplify interface, and BUILD_ENV for all relevant environments, ie dev, staging, live etc, this will ensure the script pulls from the correct backend. This should match the environment names bound to the repository branches, in Amplify.
4. Create ACCESS_KEY_ID and SECRET_ACCESS_KEY env variables, these should be from an IAM account with CLI access to the AWS Amplify resources.
5. Ensure the amplify-pull.sh is in the repo directory, not inside the client dir, change the appId hard coded in the file to match that of the backend stack created for the Admin app instance.
6. Edit the build image settings for Client, set Amplify CLI to Latest.
7. Alter the build configuration for the Client environment, it should look something like this:

version: 1
applications:
  - frontend:
      phases:
        preBuild:
          commands:
            - ./amplify-pull.sh "${ACCESS_KEY_ID}" "${SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}"
            - yarn install
        build:
          commands:
            - yarn run build
      artifacts:
        baseDirectory: build
        files:
          - '**/*'
      cache:
        paths:
          - node_modules/**/*
    appRoot: applications/client

amplify-pull.sh

#!/bin/bash
set -e
IFS='|'
 
REACTCONFIG="{\
\"SourceDir\":\"src\",\
\"DistributionDir\":\"build\",\
\"BuildCommand\":\"npm run-script build\",\
\"StartCommand\":\"npm run-script start\"\
}"
 
AWSCLOUDFORMATIONCONFIG="{\
\"configLevel\":\"project\",\
\"useProfile\":false,\
\"profileName\":\"default\",\
\"accessKeyId\":\"$ACCESS_KEY_ID\",\
\"secretAccessKey\":\"$SECRET_ACCESS_KEY\",\
\"region\":\"eu-west-2\"\
}"
 
# Use BUILD_ENV var to check which backend to pull
AMPLIFY="{\
\"projectName\":\"admin\",\
\"appId\":\"d1esbddrn73ogy\",\
\"envName\":\"$BUILD_ENV\",\
\"defaultEditor\":\"code\"\
}"
 
FRONTEND="{\
\"frontend\":\"javascript\",\
\"framework\":\"react\",\
\"config\":$REACTCONFIG\
}"
 
PROVIDERS="{\
\"awscloudformation\":$AWSCLOUDFORMATIONCONFIG\
}"
 
echo "Build env: [ $BUILD_ENV ]"
 
amplify pull \
--amplify $AMPLIFY \
--frontend $FRONTEND \
--providers $PROVIDERS \
--yes

Functions

Lambda functions proved to be very powerful, the Amplify CLI made light work of creating a function with the relevant permissions and triggers. 

The only real effort was with finding the relevant API methods to tie the function to a service, such as the Node.js API call to update a DynamoDB table, the tedious nature of debugging via the CloudWatch logs was also a bit annoying as it did seem to take a while to update.

TAKE AWAY: Lambda is great.

Summary

Amplify is an incredibly useful tool which can scaffold an application very quickly. It takes a lot of complication out of the process, in fact sometimes It almost feels like cheating, but if and when a push to the backend stack does go wrong, it can do so in a very dramatic manner. 

It’s worth taking backups of the Amplify stack configuration before altering anything too drastically, so you can easily spin up a new stack should the need arise.

I personally believe that Amplify suffers from making certain aspects a little too simple, whilst leaving others particularly complicated. There’s quite a curve between setting up an initial application to understanding and altering a GraphQL resolver template to add fields for validation, for instance.

This does lead to a false sense of security when you initially begin the build process, assuming the unknowns will be easily known via reading the documentation, but this is seldom the case.

Most of the issues we encountered could be solved with more in depth documentation and examples.

I eventually found the Amplify naming conventions irritating, why not simply refer to the individual components of the application by their AWS Console names? Auth = Cognito, Function = Lambda, Analytics = Pinpoint etc.

After all, you very often have to get into the nitty gritty with the console directly anyway. 

Amplify is evolving at pace, with some of the notable additions looking particularly useful.

The framework now provides an Admin UI at the touch of a button, which includes a visual tool to build a GraphQL schema, amongst other notable improvements, and is backwards compatible in that the Cloud Formation templates it generates can be pulled back into source control.

In spite of its quirks, I look forward to working with Amplify again in the near future.

As it stands, it’s proven to be a very useful tool for application development and I’m sure it will only improve.