Aura Life

Proposition

As part of proposing this new role, I created a comprehensive 18 month roadmap that outlined how I would approach the initial challenges facing Aura. Becoming their first internal tech hire, I would be responsible for establishing their internal design and development function from scratch, ensuring we could transition smoothly away from external agency dependency while maintaining business continuity. The proposal included detailed analysis of the website’s three distinct services (Content, Account, and Ecommerce), identified key performance and UX issues, and presented a structured plan covering everything from initial immersion and stakeholder interviews through to establishing UX strategy, implementing processes, and conducting user research. This roadmap demonstrated not just technical understanding, but strategic thinking about how to build an internal design and development function from scratch, ensuring we could transition smoothly away from external agency dependency while maintaining business continuity.

Website re-platform

I migrated the content portion of the website from a poorly performing, difficult-to-use custom CMS to a custom-built WordPress theme designed specifically to meet the needs of the content team and business objectives. The previous system suffered from slow load times, complex content management workflows, and limited flexibility, which hindered the team’s ability to publish and update content efficiently. The new WordPress solution provides an intuitive, user-friendly interface tailored to the content team’s workflow, significantly improved performance through server-side rendering, and the flexibility to adapt to evolving business requirements. This migration not only enhanced the content team’s productivity but also delivered better user experience and SEO performance.

Company rebranding

I led the complete rebrand of Aura, creating a visual identity that balances accessibility, efficiency, and emotion. The new brand system ensures clear, inclusive communication across all touchpoints while maintaining the sensitive, empathetic tone essential for funeral care. By establishing consistent design patterns and efficient workflows, the rebrand not only improved user experience but also streamlined internal processes, enabling the team to deliver compassionate service more effectively.

Development team setup

To transition away from dependency on the external agency, I hired a back-end developer to build out our internal development capabilities. This strategic hire enabled us to take full ownership of our technical infrastructure, reduce external costs, and accelerate development velocity. With an internal team in place, we gained the flexibility to iterate quickly, respond to business needs in real-time, and build custom solutions tailored specifically to Aura’s unique requirements.

Infrastructure control

We migrated our entire infrastructure to AWS to meet strict compliance and security requirements essential for handling sensitive funeral care data. As part of this migration, we restructured the codebase into multiple discrete container-based images, enabling better scalability, maintainability, and deployment flexibility. This containerized architecture allows each service to be developed, tested, and deployed independently, reducing risk and improving our ability to respond to changing requirements while maintaining the highest standards of data security and regulatory compliance.