BVA

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I worked in e-commerce for an accessories company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with BVA?

We used them to migrate our website from Magento to Shopify. Magento was very complicated for us, and we wanted to get something more simple.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

A bunch of our extensions conflicted with one another. For example, our color selection and size selection extensions were causing issues on the backend of Magento. We were focused on simplifying our site by removing as many extensions as possible, which would decrease our need to keep so many developers on staff. The goal was to use as many of Shopify’s native extensions as possible rather than rely on third-party extensions.

Beyond this simplification, BVA was also going to help us integrate our two brands into one website.

What is the team dynamic?

I worked with at least ten people throughout our brand discovery meetings and development work. We interacted with their VP of customer success, a frontend developer, a backend developer, a UX designer, and a marketing coordinator.

How did you come to work with BVA?

We heard about them through our Shopify Plus representative, whom we reached out to for a recommendation for a vendor to migrate us over from Magento. They gave us a list of seven or so options, and we picked three vendors with significant Magento to Shopify migration experience.

The other two companies we looked at were creative and had good design skills, but BVA had the most experience moving sites from Magento to Shopify.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $140,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from April–July 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did your relationship with the vendor evolve?

The quality of the work was mostly underwhelming. There were at least two months of brand identity work before we got to any development. We were due for that, but despite coming up with a lot of concepts for our voice, the site ending up being very simple and basic looking. It was very much in the line of whatever the quickest template was.

The other part that really struck me is that we picked them for their expertise in migrating from Magento to Shopify, but it was still very cumbersome to get the products and details onto Shopify. BVA gave us a bunch of custom spreadsheets as templates and then had us work independently.

We also had to repeat large parts of the importing and exporting process, as their resources either weren’t experienced with Magento or hadn’t done their due diligence. We escalated these issues to the VP of customer success to get the team to refocus and deliver on the original scope. It was a very nauseating process.

How did BVA address the challenges that arose?

When we escalated our issues, I could tell that they had a very good project management team. You don’t necessarily need management software when you have somebody that’s constantly knowing what’s going on and pinging you at the right time. Their management went up immediately when we escalated. All of a sudden, everything was more aligned.

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

When the site was complete, there was a noticeable increase in conversion rate and revenue — Shopify is a better platform, in my opinion. The site got done, but we had to do a lot of legwork ourselves, and our frontend developer had to do a lot of work themselves. As I mentioned before, when we escalated our issues, we got a lot better service. We were already behind schedule, however, which put us in a bad spot.

How was project management handled?

We mainly communicated through email and weekly status calls. There was a Google Sheet with dates on it — it was odd, they weren’t using Basecamp or Asana or Monday. There was no assigning of tasks or a calendar. We had to keep up with a number of different Google Sheets. Communication was poor early on because of that, but it got better after we escalated things. They shared a lot more insights and there was much more communication.

They were very particular on what was in the scope of the contract, to the letter. For example, we discussed with the sales representative how we wanted a website with two brand identities in it, and then BVA tried to say we only signed a contract for one brand. It was very deceptive.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

One of the best things they did was that they used a very optimized set of code that made the site run really, really efficiently. They were using something that was really new and cutting-edge for site speed. The knowledge of their IT staff members was second to none from what I could see.

In what specific areas can they improve?

They could definitely improve on synchronizing what their salespeople describe and what they present to you in a contract. Their promises and deliveries could align a lot more.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

Make sure everything you discussed in the proposal phase is in the statement of work. Spend a good amount of time on it. It felt like they were giving us an introductory price and then everything else was additional, even though that wasn’t really true.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of growth at a direct-to-consumer coffee subscription business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with BVA?

We leveraged them for affiliate marketing services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They manage outreach, optimization, and communication with our affiliate partners through the Impact Radius platform, which we also purchased through them. We give them a monthly reach out note and updates for our brand.

From there, they reach out to current and new publishers to better promote us across our affiliate partners. We do a limited portion of social media promotions, but they mainly promote across blogs and publisher sites. 

What is the team composition?

We work with Ashley (Digital Marketing Manager) and Irene (Associate Director for Client Services).

How did you come to work with BVA?

The initial decision to work with them was before my time, but they do really good work in the affiliate space so we continue to work together.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $150,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve had an ongoing engagement since February 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

They’ve continued to grow our affiliate program pretty aggressively. Our program has grown 150% year-over-year (YoY). In terms of new customer growth, we’ve been pretty consistent. We did a really good holiday season over the last two months; they drove 20% of our revenue. 

How did BVA perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Google Sheets and they send through Periscope reports of performance. In terms of overall project management, they’re a bit weak.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They understand the affiliate marketing space and our brand values — they know where we want to take the program. I’ve worked with a lot of affiliate partners in the past where they just want to push buttons and make their program look big, like coupon partners, but they don’t actually add value to the brand. BVA is really cognizant of that and they understand we want to focus on content and upper-funnel partners. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m not sure how much of it is due to COVID-19, but communication and project management can be weak and we have to stay on top of them to push things through. Their response times, when I email them, could be improved. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Really stay on top of them in terms of organization and pushing things through. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a strategic project manager for a company that sells audio upgrades for various cars. We sell plug and play audio upgrades that people can order and install themselves, and I run our marketing operations through the website.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with BVAccel?

Our company first built the website on a custom platform many years ago, and a lot of different developers have worked on it over that time. The site had become very difficult to update because of the messy code and lack of structure that resulted from having so many different developers involved.

Because of the instability we were experiencing, we wanted to shift our platform to a more modern solution. The biggest challenge with that was re-implementing the system we had developed that allowed our users to input their specific make and model and view the options that would work with their particular vehicle.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We presented the project to their team and explained the functionality we needed and requested that it be built on a Shopify plus platform because of the requirements and budget we had. What we didn’t realize was that the solution they offered utilized the Shopify tagging function, and it wasn’t until 2–3 months in that they realized that wouldn’t work and they would have to build a custom app to deal with vehicle selection.

At first, they said that because they had quoted us incorrectly, they would build the app at no cost to us, but the project would take a few months longer, which we thought was great. Unfortunately, however, they ended up taking most of their resources off the project and leaving us with only one developer to work with.

After about a year, they delivered the project for QA, and the app was not at all what they had promised. It looked awful, and the vehicle selector didn’t even work. Our CEO got involved, and it was at that point that we found out they had been taken over by an investment firm and removed resources because our project was no longer profitable to them.

We ended up agreeing to pay more money and they started working on our project again, with a new project manager who we did actually like. After closer to two years, at that point, the project was delivered again but still with a lot of bugs and generally sloppy work from our perspective. We transitioned to a new company and are now much more satisfied with how things are going.

What is the team composition?

There was one project manager dedicated to the project at the beginning, who changed toward the end of the project to someone who was much better at communicating. We were as in touch with their vice president who was incredibly off-putting and refused to acknowledge that any of the difficulties were their fault. Toward the end of the project, we also worked more closely with their development resources

How did you come to work with BVAccel?

BVAccel had originally stood out to us because of their online presence and the fact that they were located in San Diego so we could go to their office as necessary during the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We were initially quoted at $40,000 and ended up spending around twice that amount.

What is the status of this engagement?

The whole process lasted about two years, from February 2018–November 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It became clear fairly quickly that what they wanted to do was draw us in with an easy IT project and then upsell us on marketing, which they tried to do multiple times. Our project turned out to be a little more difficult, and since we didn’t have any trust in the relationship, we never even looked at their marketing offers.

One time, the COO got on the phone with us and listened to our complaints, but nothing really came of that in the end. The app itself is still very unreliable and made essentially no progress from their early deliveries to the end of the project. Overall, the design was very sloppy in ways that made it completely unusable for us in the end.

How did BVAccel perform from a project management standpoint?

Their team was initially very responsive and did a lot to reassure us about the progress they were making. Then, when we reported issues to them in the eventual work, they were very eager to let us know they would resolve it, but we would eventually get something back that had all the same issues anyway.

Communication from them was usually unprofessional, from their VP blaming us for the difficulties but then admitting he hadn’t actually looked at the project himself, to the project manager telling us that their developer was on vacation but would try to work from there. They hit virtually no deadlines throughout the entire project,

Are there any areas they could improve?

With our new team, we truly have the feeling that our account manager knows our project and is actually involved. They are able to give us an honest, realistic perspective of the timelines that are possible. We got virtually none of this from BVAccel because rather than being focused on the development, they were worried about leveraging the marketing aspect of their business to make money.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Keep in mind that they are not just a development team but a marketing company as well and that they are beholden to shareholders, so they won’t focus on the quality of their service if it’s in conflict with the profitability of the project.