At the end of every year, we look back at the milestones we’ve achieved and the growth we’ve made as a global app development company and international team. In last year’s blog, COVID-19’s impact on our daily lives and organization as a whole played a significant role. As we all know, it has also been present for the entirety of 2021. However, as time passes with COVID still amongst us, we continuously adapt and improve in order to be able to provide the best possible digital experiences and solutions for our clients. Because of this, we are proud to be the number one app and web-development company in The Netherlands and Malaysia, Australia, Belgium, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and soon to be many more countries around the globe, and the 30+ 5-star reviews in our pocket are proof of this.

Keep on reading to find out how we stayed on top of our game in 2021, and how we’re aiming to become the number one mobile app and web app developer in many more countries around the world next year.

COVID-19

COVID-19 and the governmental measurements that came along with it impacted our daily lives again this year. Just when we were packing our lunches to take to the office again, the virus managed to strike back and sent many of us back to a remote working environment. Luckily, our global character and international presence have made us accustomed to remote working and performing our daily tasks and meetings digitally.

The availability of vaccines also opened up a lot of opportunities we had to miss for such a long time. Most of us are able to travel again, which allowed for a long-awaited reunion between our Rotterdam - and KL Lizards. Next to that, the possibility of events also opened up again, including the recurring CIC Venture Café sessions on Thursdays in Rotterdam, and CES Unveiled event in Amsterdam.

December floods in Malaysia

As if a global pandemic wasn’t enough, eight states in Malaysia got struck by a disastrous flood that affected the lives of already more than 125.000 citizens during December and January. While floods are a recurring issue in Malaysia, usually coming forth from the annual monsoon season between October and March, this year the rainfall emerged later and heavier than usual. The National Disaster Management Agency stated that some areas remain under the immense impact of the floods and need all the help they can get.

The Malaysian Red Crescent provided goods for the affected areas, distributed by the Humanitarian Aid Malaysia, together with the help from public donors and donations done by Lizard Global. With these donations, we were able to provide items like stoves, milk powder, towels and blankets, toiletries, diapers, and dry food.

The citizens of the affected areas in Malaysia can still use your help. You can reach out to HASS office at +60 11-1148 3414 to find out more about how you can help communities affected by the flood.

New Lizards

Every year, our international Lizard Family is growing with new innovative spirits with a passion for anything tech-related. From sales and marketing to UI/UX design and software development, we were incredibly happy to be able to welcome more Lizards to the team and grow as an international team with different backgrounds. Please, give a warm welcome to:

• Gwenn UI/UX design, Kuala Lumpur HQ
• Crystal: UI/UX design, Kuala Lumpur HQ
• Mun Kit: Developer, Kuala Lumpur HQ
• Alaa: Commercial intern, UAE department
• Kane: former intern, back as a developer, Kuala Lumpur HQ
• Ramin: Developer, Kuala Lumpur HQ
• Soon: Developer, Kuala Lumpur HQ
• David: former intern, now commercial strategist, Rotterdam HQ
• Robin: PO Intern and SEO expert, Rotterdam HQ
• Muawiya: PO/PM intern, Kuala Lumpur HQ
• Fatih: Development intern, Rotterdam HQ
• Mo: Development intern, Rotterdam HQ

Speaking of which, have you seen our new career page yet? The career page is a brand new addition to our website and another big milestone of 2021. On this page, you can find all our open vacancies and all the information you need to find out if you’re the right candidate for a spot in one of our Lizard Global departments.

New partnerships

The past year has been full of new opportunities and partnerships. Even with COVID-19 standing in the way of our usual networking events and real-life meetings, we established a lot of inspiring new innovative partnerships with the power of online presence and digital communication in more than 8 different countries, from the UK to Brunei and the Philippines. Check out the list of all projects we’ve worked on in 2021, with clients from all around the globe:

Malaysia

• Perpetual Memorial (digital workshops, UI/UX design, and software development)
• Heineken (UI/UX design and software development)
• Globiz (UI/UX design and software development)
• Status-K (software development)
• Tiger Beer (UI/UX design and software development)

The Netherlands

• VaxiTaxi (UI/UX design and software development)
• Transvision (UI/UX design and software development)

Singapore

• The Better Sudoku App (UI/UX design and software development)

Australia

• Retiink (UI/UX design and software development)

United Kingdom

• Aposto (software development)

Suriname

• GWAP (UI/UX design and software development)

Brunei

• aiduri Bank (UI/UX design and software development)

Belgium

• Suspicious Antwerp (to be continued)

New workshops

In 2020/2021 we introduced our digital workshops to the world. With these new workshops, we can welcome clients from all over the world, as the sessions are designed to be done in person, but also online in remote settings. This way, we can provide the best tools and knowledge for clients who are looking for ways to digitally transform and expand their business, no matter where they are situated. We are proud to say that we already completed some very successful digital workshops with brand new innovative clients:

• SHFT! (Malaysia)
• Jordan (Malaysia)
• Tapsody (the Netherlands)
• Lucifer Apps (the Netherlands)
• IONtech (Philippines)

Want to read more about our workshop? Check out our blogs on the customizable Design Thinking, Digital Transformation and Solution Strategy workshops.

Online presence

For the past year, our commercial team has been working hard on our online presence via social media channels and other platforms. In 2021, we managed to reach more than 1000 followers on our LinkedIn. We greatly optimized our social media presence by turning our social posts into engaging visual stories, diving into our latest blog articles, inspiring case studies, innovative quotes, and sneak peeks behind the scenes of Lizard Global.

Besides our social channels, we also keep expanding our presence on other platforms, such as Sortlist and Clutch. These channels allow us to present our portfolio to visitors who are still looking for a development partner. While at the same time, they allow our clients to leave a testimonial about our partnership. This way, we learn from our clients while sharing our expertise as a global web application and mobile app development partner.

​​

Website & visitors

At Lizard Global, we’re continuously adding value to our clients and their customers by providing solutions that run on the latest technologies and are inspired by the latest design trends. And we do the same for ourselves. By constantly optimizing our website and online presence by listening to our audience, we grew from an average of 250 unique visitors a month to a steady 4500 per month. As an agile company, we thrive on the feedback we receive from our audience and the data we analyze. This way, we can continuously adapt and improve our services and our content in order to provide the best possible experience for our visitors. That’s what we did with our current landing page, which had a major SEO update in its titles and subtitles, which makes it easier for you to find us on Google.

New web pages

In 2021, our website has significantly expanded with a brand new career page, on which you can find open vacancies and more information about what it’s like to work at Lizard Global. We also added a page specifically designed to showcase the awards we are incredibly proud of. Check out the awards here and take a journey from our inception in 2012 to now, to see what awards we have obtained over the years.

We also created our brand new industry pages, which tell you more about the industries our clients are active in, the projects we’ve worked on, and how our help resulted in the digital transformation of businesses in more than 25 industries and counting. Stay tuned to be there for the launch of our brand new industry pages.

”I can honestly say that, all things considered, 2021 was one of the greatest years at Lizard Global. It is not just about all the achievements as a company, but also about the dedication, commitment and effort of the entire Lizard Global team which makes me proud when looking back at a successful year but gives me even more confidence when looking forward to what to come.” - Terence, CEO Asia

UI/UX Design team

What a rollercoaster of a year 2021 has been for product design at Lizard Global. A year where we were dead set on professionalizing our ways of working and expanding our service offering but also enhancing interdepartmental collaboration. We have achieved just that all while reshuffling the team afresh with two new hyper talented hires in Gwenn and Crystal and saying farewell to Yoyo after a 4 year career with us. It’s no small feat given that the pace of delivery within an agency can be hectic and unorthodox; every project comes with its fair share of curveballs and requires you to readjust on the fly all while improving the output quality time after time. The collaboration and self organization of agile scrum, pioneered by our amazing and empathetic project managers, has made interdepartmental teamwork seamless, empowering each and every team member. This has ultimately skyrocketed the efficiency of project teams and, most important of all, benefitted our clients and their investment.

So how did we get to this point in the last 12 months? The key for us was to bring in diversity in skill set, personality and culture and individuals with a hunger to learn and constantly be a better version of themselves day in, day out. Product design, and this industry in general, is a field that does not allow you to rest on your laurels; there is always a new thing, a new methodology, a new approach, a new trend. You have to pick the endeavours that financially make sense for the organization and its goals. Those endeavours we focussed on were:

• Switching from Sketch and Invision to Figma as the ultimate design and prototyping tool for live collaboration in the cloud.
• Consolidate the foundation of our design thinking workshops of 2020 into a staple offering for new projects at Lizard Global.
• Given our global presence, offer a remote alternative to our in-person workshops without compromising on the quality of the output.
• Streamline collaboration within project teams lead by design through a stringent process of low fidelity wireframes to high fidelity wireframes to final design mock-ups.
• Invest in and set the foundation for extensive and insightful UX research methodologies to strengthen the importance of design thinking in product development.
• Embrace Growth Tracker (Growtribe) as the platform empowering designers to choose new areas they wish to grow and skills they wish to further refine.

Our incessantly growing clientele portfolio has gotten a boost in pedigree and budget size. In turn, we are expected to perform and deliver at a significantly refined quality and increased speed. So here’s to 2022 where we will aim to be the number 1 agency offering remote design thinking workshops in Asia and one day, the world. A year where we will get to showcase our expertise in product and software development to even more industries. A year where we will get a chance to once more expand the product design team vertically and horizontally with yet again, new service offerings.

”Thank you Gwenn and Crystal; the department would not even be halfway to its aspirations if it were not for you two. Thank you for rekindling my love for my craft, making every new day worth looking forward to. Thank you to all departmental managers for making an unadulterated effort in getting our departments to collaborate, strengthening our bonds and common understanding. Thank you Terence for always advocating for us, believing in us and giving us a just amount of nudge and spank to overcome our inhibitions and fulfil our potential. Lizard Global, let’s rock 2022 together!” - Eric, UI/UX manager.

So, what’s next?

We are excited to dive into the sea of opportunities that 2022 has to offer. We will keep doing what we’ve been doing for the past years: partnering up with innovative and inspiring people to create cutting-edge and revolutionary digital solutions. However, we will do it even better, continuously optimizing our services in order to add value to our clients and their customers. Our digital workshops will play a very important role in 2022, providing more and more clients with the knowledge and tools they need to start up their business and work towards the creation of their very own digital solution.

Need a hand?

Are you looking for a full-stack digital partner for the conceptualization and creation of your very own mobile application or web app in 2022? Get in touch with our experts and take your business to the next level with your own digital solution and partnership for life.