Cape Town, January 11th, 2017

Elemental Web Solutions was founded in 2004, in Cape Town, South Africa by Jerry Diender and Angelo Zanetti.

“It was just after the .com bubble burst and IT jobs were scarce,” recalls Zanetti. “I was still studying part time when they started the business.”

With the positive attitude of ‘If you can’t get the job, you can invent it.’ The company started developing custom web solutions with great success.

On its 10th anniversary, they decided it was time to expand. Jerry moved to The Nederland, to orchestrate Elemental’s European expansion, leaving SA on the capable hands of Zanetti.

Elemental has forged strong relationships with clients, agencies and organisations around the world, resulting in work being done on some of the biggest brands in the world, such as Heineken, Adidas, Red Bull, BMW, Mini, to name but a few.

Its clients range from agencies, to companies, organisations and start-ups. The agency has worked with clients in five continents and over 30 industries.

“We love what we do and this is evident in the work we produce as well as the excellent relationships we have developed with our clients,” says Zanetti. ”Having a great understanding of business and the web industry we are able to provide our clients with superior solutions that will meet their requirements and generate them a return on investment.”

A dozen people currently work at Elemental. The culture at Elemental is fast paced and exciting, owing to the various types of projects and technologies it gets to work with. We asked Zanetti to tell us a bit more.

Can you describe your agency in three words?

Technical. Ambitious. Experienced.

In your opinion, what ingredients are key to create a successful digital solution?

A combination of great design / UX, easy to use yet sophisticated functionality and high traffic.

Could tell us something about Elemental’s ‘Scoping and Wireframing’. Why is it important?

When we tackle a complex project, we need to understand various things, such as the client’s (custom) requirements, their business, processes and stakeholders.

In order to get an in depth knowledge of these things we need to do discovery sessions which also include scoping and wireframing the project. This ensures that we are all on the same page and that the client’s expectations and requirements are clear.

This is a crucial part of the project and is essential to the success of a project. We like to use the analogy of a house, where by the scoping and wireframing is essentially the blueprint, which typically an architect would draw up before the project starts.

What is your personal definition of creativity?

To express yourself uniquely and efficiently

Are there online publications, professionals, industry leaders you follow?

• Digital Agency Masterclass.
• Agencies Drinking Beer.
• Agency Management Institute.

Which cities outside where you live interest you creatively?

• London
• Amsterdam
• Dubai

Please list a few of your favourite digital brands:

• Uber, Google, Red Bull, Amazon

What do you like doing in your free time?

• Cooking
• Playing soccer
• Spending time with the family
• Playing guitar

Which are the most important web tools that you use?

Various development tools and IDEs, such as PHP storm, SQL Yog, Google Analytics and web master tools. Browser based debugging tools.

Can you tell us about a project you worked on (a case study) and that was especially successful?

Imagined Earth. Where we created a website and software that allowed people to interact with a Reverse Vending Machine, which allows people to recycle cans and bottles.

Case Study: http://www.elemental.solutions/our-work/imagined-earth

We like it because the custom requirements the client had and the way we were able to deliver the end result, which was exactly as the client expected. Its fairly cutting edge and uses innovative technology as well.

Elemental’s work can be very varied. For instance, we have helped many businesses of varying sizes that have experienced an ‘Excel nightmare,’ to solve their issues by designing and building custom web-based tools that address the key problems. In many instances, Excel is not the right tool for the job.

Our bespoke web based apps are made with efficiency in mind, ensuring that capturing data is simple, easy and user-friendly.

Some other projects we do are about making websites almost bullet proof. These days too many web developers focus on using all the lovely new web technologies that are coming out these days, and in so doing, they lose support for the older web browsers.

About 20% of all browsers in use today, fall into the ‘old’ or ‘buggy’ category, for example, Internet Explorer 6 and 7. So at least 20% of people with these old browsers will have difficulty to experience the website as it was intended to be.

When you start using the latest technologies exclusively, this number increases to almost 40% of users that cannot view the website properly.

Elemental can build any website and ensure that it works across all browsers.

We always consider the user and the experience they will have, especially on different devices such as desktop PCS, tablets and mobile phones. Intuitive functionality ensures that more things can be done quicker in fewer steps.

How do you imagine the UX concept to work in the future?

UX will constantly evolve as technology, users and especially devices evolve. UX will expand to newer types of devices and touch points to ensure that user interaction is extremely friendly and somewhat consistent irrespective of platform and device.

How do you organize your team and their tasks to guarantee quality assurance (QA)?

QA starts in the development phase with each developer being responsible somewhat for the work they produce and ensuring it is of high quality. Project management processes have defined QA phases to ensure that this crucial process is performed.

Name a challenge your team is currently facing.

Diversification into other areas that are web and technology related.

What piece of advice would you give a recent grad looking to work in digital marketing?

Keep learning and educating yourself, as well as keeping up to date with trends in the industry. Put the user first and always deliver value.

By Geny Caloisi.
genyc@topinteractiveagencies.com

Follow Angelo Zanetti on social media:
LinkedIn

Learn more about Elemental Web Solutions

Follow Elemental Web Solutions on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/ElementalWebSolutions
https://twitter.com/elementaltweet
https://www.linkedin.com/company/elemental—web-solutions

Angelo ZanettiIDEsImagined EarthJerry DienderProfilesUXWeb Design