Updated Web Development for Copper Wire Manufacturer
- Web Development
- $10,000 to $49,999
- Sep. 2019 - Ongoing
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 5.0
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"As a company, we loved our partnership with them."
- Manufacturing
- New Haven, Connecticut
- 11-50 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
Bop Design redesigned a WordPress website for a copper wire manufacturer. They also resolved issues, created content, and reorganized the blog to make the site SEO-friendly.
Although the redesign initially made the site fall in rankings, as is normal, the site has recovered and is performing better than before. Bop Design has integrity, and they provide an excellent value for a reasonable price.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I am the director of marketing for a copper wire manufacturer.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with Bop Design?
I joined the company about two years ago. We had an old website that was outsourced abroad. It was okay, but it was outdated with old aesthetics and had functional limitations and UX issues. It wasn’t a progressive, modern website.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
There was the old website that they worked off of, but we had to create a new sitemap and while we were building out the site, during the initial engagement, they did a great job of really understanding our business goals to help with the new website. They understood our perspective and what we needed. They did a good job of showing the project timeline and we went through all that.
While we were creating the website, there were definitely some issues from the old website that had to be addressed such as missing content, dividing the blog from company news, and they did a really good job of addressing all those issues when we hit them quite quickly.
We stayed in WordPress because we wanted to make sure our SEO did a good job of maintaining the website. We wanted to be Google-friendly and mobile-friendly which was obviously an important concern for us.
What is the team composition?
Overall, they are quite cross-functional in how they work. It was a waterfall methodology, meaning while we were doing different parts of the web redesign, you still have different functional experts within the company. While we were doing the initial concept of the homepage, it involved a lead designer. When we started going into the content creation phase, we had more interaction with their head of content. In the last phase, we had more interaction with their lead web developer. There was always a project manager involved along the way but one of the things I liked about Bop Design is that I was interacting with the functional expert as well. Whenever I had a question, I would CC the project manager, but I always interfaced directly with the expert at the time.
How did you come to work with Bop Design?
I turned to Google first. I have some SEO expertise, and I googled B2B website redesign agency and they showed up at the top of Google. That is a pretty hard keyword to rank for, and I thought that was very much a stamp of approval of Google and they must be doing something right to have that prized position.
I had dealt with several different agencies but several were unprofessional. Bop Design impressed me with their portfolio of other companies in my own vertical they have worked with. I did like they are an agency that doesn’t say they do everything. They are quite specialized. They told me what they focus on which is more on manufacturing, IT, and financial services, and they actually do that.
Their content was good. They have a pretty good content marketing operation in-house. It didn’t have too much jargon; it was really helpful and good content. When I spoke to them, I thought they were very first class in the way they handled our engagement. They weren’t pushy. Those initial points of interaction were important.
I asked them to send me some of their own marketing materials so I could know how they go about designing a website, and a couple of days later I got a box in the mail with a handwritten card in it from Jeremy (Business Principal) and that definitely stood out.
How much have you invested in them?
Altogether, it was maybe $44,000. They are really great at trying to stay in budget and they really went out of their way to find ways to not charge us for things. There were things that we did not include in the scope and they were great to try and find a way to work around it.
What is the status of this engagement?
I believe it was September 2019.
I kept them on for a content marketing retainer. The website is live, and the content marketing retainer started in June and that is a one-year engagement.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Typically, when you launch a new website, your SEO takes a big hit but it is normal. It was an important thing to me that we knew we were going to take a hit but we needed to recover as quickly as possible for keyword positioning. It is totally normal to fall but the question is how long you stay down for. I currently track a lot of keywords and monitor them regularly each day to see if we were falling more flat or increasing.
Compared to where we were a year ago, we are up in organic search and we are starting to see the uptick. They made a website that is now working towards our SEO, and I think that as we grow as a company, it is the right website we want people visiting. They did a great job making the website SEO friendly and that is reflecting in the analytics.
How did Bop Design perform from a project management standpoint?
I think they used Basecamp. I sent a lot of emails, and I would say our most dominant form of interaction was probably email. We also had a periodic video conference. We had an internal web design team of about five members who represented different organs of the company. Then towards the end of the debugging process we used a tool called BugHerd where myself and other members of the company would go through and mark areas to fix. It has a Trello board in it.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Marketing agencies are not like law firms that are accredited and have to take the bar exam which is a method of quality control. At the end of the day, a lot of people think of agencies have minimal experience, it can feel a little Wild West with agencies and any of them can say whatever they want. If you don’t know what you’re doing, a lot of them can squeeze a company for a lot of money.
When I looked at the price comparison, it was such a good value. I remember talking to one agency who said it would be a minimum of six figures which I thought was absurd. Bop Design has a lot of integrity in how they go about doing their business. That really stood out to me and I thought they really got us. They took the time to interview us and talk to the different members of our company. When they did the creative pitch and reviewed the website and went through the pages, apart from the debugging process, I felt they did such a good job executing on the vision we had. As a company, we loved our partnership with them.
Are there any areas they could improve?
It can feel like a risk working with a remote company especially on a web redesign and one of the advantages of the company I was thinking of choosing instead of them had at the time was that they were a lot closer to us. Where Bop Design can improve a little bit is to have some more scheduled phone call meetings. We had some of those, but it wasn’t the easiest to have a phone call just to talk about something. They were pretty fast with emails, but I think it is important to have more regular communication and if someone has a question, they can pick up the phone and call that point person for that. I wouldn’t say it was a frustration but something they could get a little better at.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
You need to know your business. You need to know what you are doing and have someone that can do that. In my opinion and with my expertise, I think that often when a relationship goes sour between a client and the agency, I think it can often be on the client-side.
They don’t know what they are doing or don’t have realistic expectations. You need to have real reasonable goals you are trying to achieve, and you need to have an internal evangelist in that company who can argue for that. I have that individual in my company, so I knew what the company wanted, and Bop did a really great job of trying to understand that.
Especially for a lot of manufacturers or anyone is in the technical space, it isn’t really fair to expect an agency to know your business or know your profit margins the way you do. You have to approach them knowing that and give them direction and they will achieve that. I think Bop has been really great at that. They aren’t trying to constantly upsell us, and I think a lot of agencies will try to do that.
I feel a great deal of trust with Bop. I think they are totally transparent in trying to achieve your goals. They know what they are really good at and they stay with that and that is great for companies like mine.
RATINGS
-
Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
-
Schedule
5.0On time / deadlines
-
Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
-
Willing to Refer
5.0NPS