Podium

We build beautiful bespoke Websites, Mobile Apps, Online Ordering Systems & Social Media Management
(1)

Podium Apps Ltd is an exciting new and innovative global company (started in Belfast) that specialises in the development and management of business apps. Founded in early 2015 by Ross Porter & Kieran Donnelly, who between them hold over 20 years experience in the Telecommunications Industry, alongside extensive business and web/graphic design knowledge. It was during this time that they discovered a market need for a new medium of business to client interaction, which has lead to the development of Podium Apps Ltd. Podium Apps already boosts a wide range of clients from various business sectors, such as Education, Hospitality and Retail to name but a few. All of our apps are expertly designed, developed and created using incredible technologies trusted by companies the world over. All of our apps are bespoke, created with in-depth client consultation and using our extensive market knowledge to ensure maximum client satisfaction. Part of the success of Podium Apps has come from its ability to sign agreements with Apple, Android & Microsoft, allowing our customers to benefit from all areas of the app world. Podium Apps Ltd work in conjunction with one of the fastest growing business app development companies within UK | Ireland, USA & New Zealand, in terms of revenue, customer acquisition and customer retention allowing us to keep at the cutting edge of our field. "Your customers are mobile, Your business should be mobile too"

16/10/2026

Think about something in your business you take for granted now. A regular customer ordering again, a diary filling up, or a team member handling something you once did yourself. A few years ago, that might have made your entire week.

It's easy to forget those moments when you're busy running a business. You spend months, sometimes years, working towards something, and when it happens, you're delighted. Then another target takes its place and something you once dreamed about becomes ordinary.

Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile and researcher Steven Kramer studied nearly 12,000 daily work diary entries and found that even small amounts of progress on meaningful work were closely linked to motivation and how people felt about their day.

Tony Robbins sums it up nicely: “Progress equals happiness.”

I can relate to that. Some weeks you land a big contract or get a project over the line, while others you're pleased to have sorted a problem, made a difficult decision or had a promising conversation. They're all steps forward, and I reckon we'd enjoy building a business more if we gave ourselves some credit for them.

It's something I get a real kick out of at Podium too. We work with businesses at all stages, from people taking their first idea online to established companies improving how things work. Seeing a conversation become a live website, a system saving hours of work or an idea finally making money is rewarding, especially knowing the smaller steps it took to get there.

So, before you finish up this Friday and start thinking about Monday, have a look at what you've achieved this week or even over the past few years. Think about what the version of you who was just starting out would make of where you are today.

I suspect they'd be pretty chuffed with you 🙌

And if there's something you've been wanting to get moving on the digital side of your business, give me and the Podium team a shout. We'd love to help turn another ambition into something you can feel proud of.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘂𝗺
📲 07751 938205
📆 tidycal.com/rossporter
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.podium.dev

14/10/2026

Google could now be picking up offers from your website and using them in your ads, without you having to do a thing 👀

An interesting update from Google this week. For certain advertisers, Google Ads can now automatically recognise promotions listed on their websites and display them in relevant ads. So if you're running 20% off a product, a two-for-one deal or a special offer, Google may be able to promote it without you having to set it up separately.

Pretty handy, and another good reason to keep on top of your website.

Your website is becoming an increasingly important source of information for search engines, AI tools and advertising platforms. So keeping your products, prices, promotions and business information accurate and up to date is more important than ever.

And it's not just the content that needs attention. Outdated plugins, software that hasn't been updated, broken forms, slow-loading pages or a checkout that's stopped behaving itself can all cause problems. A website needs regular maintenance, testing and support to keep everything running as it should.

That's something we take seriously at Podium. We currently manage and support over 400 websites, looking after hosting, updates, backups, performance and the ongoing work that keeps everything ticking along. And we can take over the care of an existing website, even if we didn't build it.

Google's latest update is a useful reminder that your website doesn't just sit there waiting for visitors anymore. Other platforms are increasingly relying on the information it provides, so it's worth making sure that information is accurate and the technology behind it is properly maintained.

If your website could do with a bit more attention, give Ross and the Podium team a shout. We'll happily have a look at how we can help.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘂𝗺
📲 07751 938205
📆 tidycal.com/rossporter
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.podium.dev

12/10/2026

People don’t only buy gifts between 9 and 5 🎁

It could be somebody on the sofa at 10:30pm who’s just remembered a birthday, someone sorting a present on their lunch break, or somebody away for the weekend who suddenly thinks, “They’d love a voucher for that place.”

And if they’ve landed on your business ready to spend £50, £100 or whatever it might be, that’s a pretty good moment to let them.

The problem with traditional gift vouchers is that buying one can still depend on somebody being there. Give us a call. Send us an email. Pop in and collect it. We’ll post one out. We’ll get back to you tomorrow.

None of that is unreasonable, but every extra step gives somebody another chance to get distracted, change their mind or simply buy from somewhere that lets them sort it there and then.

Podium Cards means your gift cards can keep selling whether you’re open, closed, flat out serving customers or fast asleep 😴 Customers can visit your branded gift card shop, choose what they want to spend, add their message, pay online and have the gift delivered digitally without anybody at your end needing to process the order.

There’s no collection to arrange, nothing to post and no email waiting for somebody to pick it up the next morning. When the recipient comes to use it, redemption is straightforward too, and if they don’t spend the full amount the remaining balance stays on the card for another visit.

For restaurants, salons, studios, experiences, hospitality businesses and plenty more, it means somebody can decide they want to give your business as a gift and actually buy it while the thought is still in their head.

Because somebody could be ready to spend with you tonight at 10:47pm.
You might as well be ready for it! 👀

Give Ross and the team a shout, or take a look at podium.cards

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘂𝗺 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀
📲 07751 938205
📧 [email protected]
🌐 podium.cards

07/10/2026

The best thing about experience is that, in the right team, it compounds.

At Podium, a good result on one project doesn’t just get filed away and forgotten about. Neither does a mistake, a difficult integration, a clever workaround or one of those jobs that forces us to rethink how we approach something. All of that becomes part of the knowledge we carry into the next piece of work.

That’s one of the real advantages of having a team that’s been doing this for years and actually leans on each other. Clients aren’t only getting the experience of the developer, designer or SEO person directly involved in their project. They’re benefiting from everything the wider team has seen, fixed, tested and learned across hundreds of different jobs and businesses.

Quite often, somebody has already dealt with a version of the problem before. Someone else might know a cleaner way to build it, another person might spot an issue early because they’ve seen what happens when it gets missed, and when one of us finds a better way of doing something, that knowledge gets shared.

That’s where the old “a rising tide lifts all boats” idea really fits. The stronger each person becomes, the stronger the team becomes, and over time that turns into better processes, sharper judgement, quicker problem solving and a much more well-oiled machine behind the scenes.

And that matters because clients aren’t just paying Podium to complete a task. They’re paying for the thinking that sits behind it. Knowing what tends to work, what deserves questioning, where problems usually appear, when custom development genuinely makes sense and when there’s a simpler route that will do the job just as well.

Every project should leave us better equipped for the next one, and every lesson learned should ultimately improve the work our clients get.

That’s a big part of the value of having an experienced team in your corner.

If you’ve got something you want to build, improve or rethink, give Ross and the Podium team a shout.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘂𝗺
📲 07751 938205
📆 tidycal.com/rossporter
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.podium.dev

05/10/2026

You don’t always know when your website has lost you a customer.
They might have tried to submit an enquiry, book something, check a product or find an answer and hit something broken, slow or out of date. Most won’t tell you. They’ll just go somewhere else.

For a potential customer, those problems raise questions. Is the business still active? Can I trust the checkout? Will anyone answer my message? You might be brilliant at what you do, but your website has already given them a reason to hesitate.

With the busy end-of-year period approaching, it’s worth making sure the website you’re promoting is ready for the customers you’re sending its way.

At Podium, we design, build, host and support websites, with the same team staying involved after launch. Websites start from £60 per month, with payment plans available, so we can talk through an option that works for your business and budget.

Our managed hosting and support covers fast, secure hosting, round-the-clock uptime and performance monitoring, tested plugin and system updates, daily backups and backups before changes. Our hosting page currently reports 99.99% uptime over the past 12 months.

You also have people to contact who know your website. We target a response within an hour for critical issues such as a site going down or a broken checkout, and the same working day for urgent problems. That means knowing who’s dealing with it and hearing back when it’s sorted.

We already host and support 400+ websites, and yours doesn’t have to have been built by us. We can review an existing site, resolve problems and take over its hosting and ongoing care. If a repair and better support will do the job, we’ll tell you.

If yours needs attention, give Ross and the Podium team a shout. Let’s get it working properly before things get busier.

Podium
📲 07751 938205
📆 tidycal.com/rossporter
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.podium.dev

04/10/2026

I was catching up with a friend recently and we got chatting about business, opportunities and how we decide what’s worth putting our energy into. Before we finished, we landed on something I’ve become much more conscious of over the years: time is one of our most valuable commodities.

Of course the financial side matters. I want the business to do well and the work to be worthwhile. But I place a huge value on my time too. When you give something your attention, you’re putting thought, experience and a piece of your day into it. I want to be deliberate about where that goes, whether it’s helping a business move forward, making time for a friend or being properly present with my family.

It made me think about how often we make business decisions around the money going out, without giving the time involved quite the same consideration. We’ll question the cost of a better system, then spend hours every week manually copying orders, chasing information or keeping a process moving that depends on us being involved at every stage.

Those hours still cost something. They just don’t arrive as an invoice.

Sometimes that cost is an opportunity we haven’t had time to follow up, a customer kept waiting or another evening spent catching up when we’d hoped to be home. We can be careful with every pound and still lose a lot through the way the business runs.

That’s why, when we talk to businesses at Podium about their websites and systems, we want to understand where the time is going. What keeps needing chased? What are staff entering twice? What falls behind when the owner takes a few days off? It gives us somewhere practical to start, with improvements that can make a difference to everyone’s working day.

A sensible investment should earn its place. Sometimes that’s through more sales. Sometimes it’s through giving you and your team hours back every week, with fewer things depending on you personally.

I want to build a business that gives me choices about my time, and help other owners do the same. If there’s a part of yours that keeps eating into the day, give me a shout. We can talk it through and see whether there’s a better way to handle it.

Podium
📲 07751 938205
📆 tidycal.com/rossporter
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.podium.dev

01/10/2026

Getting your website live is a big milestone. Knowing who’s looking after it six months later should be just as straightforward.

But when the design, development, hosting and support have been handed between different people over the years, even a simple fix can turn into a round of emails trying to work out who’s responsible. Meanwhile, you’re still waiting for something your business needs.

At Podium, we bring all of that under one roof. We build the site, host it, keep it maintained and backed up, and provide support from people who know how it works. When you need a change or something needs attention, you’ve got a team to speak to without having to explain the whole setup again.

That ongoing relationship also means we can keep improving it. As your business changes, we can look at what customers are doing, where enquiries or orders are being lost, and what needs to work better. SEO, advertising and improvements to the customer journey all have a clearer purpose when they’re connected to the business behind the website.

We now host and support 400+ websites across the UK, Ireland, Finland and New Zealand, with design, development, hosting and growth handled by the same team.

Build it. Host it. Support it. Improve it. Grow it.

If you’re tired of chasing fixes, juggling different suppliers or wondering what should happen next with your website, book a chat with Ross. We’ll talk through where things stand and how we can help.

Podium
📲 07751 938205
📆 tidycal.com/rossporter
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.podium.dev

28/09/2026

As we head into the final few months of the year, people start buying more gifts, booking experiences and looking for easy ways to treat someone.

And if people already love what your business does, there’s a pretty simple question worth asking: why shouldn’t somebody be able to buy that experience for someone else?

For a restaurant, that could be dinner for two. For a salon, a treatment. For a studio, classes or credit towards a membership. For an experience business, it could be something bought today and enjoyed months from now.

That’s exactly what Podium Cards makes easy.

Customers can buy a fully branded digital gift card online, the money comes into your business up front through Stripe, and the card can be redeemed later. You choose the values, match everything to your own branding and add the link straight to your website, socials or wherever your customers are already finding you.

It works with WooCommerce, supports partial and multi-use redemption, and your team can redeem cards from a phone, tablet or laptop without needing specialist hardware.

There’s no setup fee, no monthly subscription and no charge per card. Pricing is 3.9% + 30p per transaction, and because the sale happens directly with your business, you keep the customer relationship and the data that comes with it.

We’ve already seen businesses using Podium Cards sell a serious number of gift cards through the platform, and with the busiest gifting period of the year getting closer, there’s a very obvious opportunity there for businesses that have never offered them before.

If you’ve got something people would happily buy for somebody else, whether that’s a meal, treatment, class, membership, experience or simply credit to spend later, Podium Cards gives you a straightforward way to start selling it.

Give Ross and the Podium team a shout, or take a look at podium.cards and get it in place before the end-of-year rush begins.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘂𝗺
📲 07751 938205
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.podium.cards

25/09/2026

START LOCAL. BUILD STRONG. DREAM GLOBAL.

Kainos started here in Belfast in 1986 through a partnership between Queen’s University and ICL. Nearly forty years later, it’s a global technology business.

The part of that story that really resonates with me is that Belfast wasn’t somewhere they had to grow out of. It was the place they built from.

Being proudly local and thinking globally aren’t opposites. Your local market can be where you build the reputation, understand your customers, sharpen what you’re offering and prove that the idea actually works. None of that means you have to decide in advance that this is as far as the business can ever go.

I think plenty of good ideas probably get capped too early simply because we get used to thinking within the boundaries we already know. But if something works here, there may be demand for it elsewhere too. That could mean a new market, a different type of customer or taking something that has worked brilliantly at home and seeing how far it can travel.

Technology has made that jump a hell of a lot smaller than it used to be. At Podium, we’ve seen businesses use their websites, ecommerce, custom systems and wider digital setup to reach customers well beyond where they started, while still keeping the local relationships and identity that made the business what it is.

You don’t have to choose between being proudly local and thinking bigger. Build something strong where you are, then don’t put a ceiling on where it could go.

Start local. Build strong. Dream global.

If you’ve built something that’s working and you’re starting to wonder what the next stage could look like, give Ross and the Podium team a shout.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘂𝗺
📲 07751 938205
📆 tidycal.com/rossporter
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.podium.dev

23/09/2026

Really lovely feedback to get from Ewa after we finished the new website for The Avenue Brasserie in Belfast 🍽️🥂

“We had a fantastic experience working with Podium Websites. They were incredibly quick, efficient and attentive throughout the entire process, taking the time to understand our brand guidelines and bring our vision to life.

The finished website exceeded our expectations, and we couldn’t be happier with the result. Would highly recommend Podium Websites to anyone looking for a professional, creative and reliable team!”

- ⁠Ewa Gillan

Taking the time to really understand the business and the people we’re working with is such an important part of the process for us.

Nobody wants to spend money on a new website only to end up with something generic that could belong to any business in the same industry. The design, messaging, customer journey and overall feel of the site should properly reflect the business behind it.

So feedback like Ewa’s means a lot. Not only because they’re happy with the finished website, but because the whole process felt right from start to finish.

Big thanks to Ewa and everyone at The Avenue Brasserie for trusting us with it.

If you’re thinking about a new website and want a team that’ll take the time to understand what you’re trying to build, give Ross and the Podium team a shout.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗶𝘂𝗺
📲 07751 938205
📆 tidycal.com/rossporter
📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.podium.dev

Address

Belfast

Website

https://podium.dev/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Podium posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Podium: