Working with Superkoders pays off more for us than an in-house coder

For 14 years now, we've been regularly modernizing and updating the website of travel agency Invia. We handle the entire frontend, code the site's templates, and keep 400 components running. With about 350 hours of work a month, we operate as one single team.

Invia has its own in-house team of backend developers. So it seemed natural to also have an in-house frontend developer. But they didn't want to depend on just one or two people who'd be isolated in the office, at risk of stagnating or losing the motivation to keep learning.

On top of that, if that frontend developer ever left, the whole system would collapse, and they'd have to find someone new who'd most likely have a completely different working style and way of thinking.

1. We can guarantee redundancy — even if a colleague gets sick, we always deliver the work on time,
2. Our output is consistent and top-notch quality,
3. We handle the entire frontend including optimizations,
4. We're active in the developer community and stay on top of the latest news and trends,
5. We're self-sufficient.

In the past, we tried working with another agency, but it always felt thrown together at the last minute — it lacked structure and continuity. When we heard about Superkoders, we decided to give them a shot, and it worked out 100%.

Our collaboration mainly runs through Basecamp. Invia's product owner puts together the brief, we code the template based on it, and then send it back for Invia to implement. For quick communication, we're also connected via Slack.

With Invia, we're set up in a way that we don't even need to schedule meetings. We just message each other and solve the problem. That makes for a great three-way collaboration between us, Invia, and their designer, who we as frontend developers stay in close contact with.

Invia sells seasonal products, and its offering keeps changing, so its website constantly needs improving, both technologically and from a user standpoint. The internal environment for managing the company's infrastructure, used by hundreds of employees and part-timers, keeps changing too.

On top of that, 2019 brought a major redesign. We could have rebuilt the whole site from scratch, but that would have been expensive. So instead, we found a way to keep the site on its existing version of PHP while still adding modern functionality. For the more complex components that need to talk to a verification database, we chose the React framework. It now powers things like the search and booking forms, for example.

React was a clear choice. The forms are functionally some of the more complex parts of the site, where prices, dates, and other parameters constantly need recalculating. Building these components and handling data in React is more intuitive than it would be with plain HTML and vanilla JavaScript. We're also putting together a style guide in Storybook for Invia, with an overview of ready-made React components that developers can then easily implement

Invia handles the actual React implementation themselves. But whenever they need help with anything, we're there for them. We'll even go visit their Brno office in person and help them implement the logic.

We also help Invia out on an as-needed basis with other frontend-related matters, like optimizing the site's speed.