Chop-Chop

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am one of the directors at HoohaaDesign LTD. My role is Web Developer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Magently, and what were your goals?

We contacted Magently to help us on a project where we needed Magento 2 bespoke development. We wanted to find a partner that would help us develop this website for our client and that would work closely with us to deliver better user experience for our clients's web users.

We had developed the website initially with another Magento partner but there were a lot of things we wanted to improve and we also wanted a better quality of code.

SOLUTION

How did you select Magently and what were the deciding factors?

I had my eye on Magently for some time I kept wanting to work with them but there were some obstacles in the way. When our relationship with the previous developer fell through I immediately went to start a new project with Magently.

I liked their website and the level of their work was impressive. I also got a good impression when I contacted their project manager and discussed the needs of the project.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We wanted to add a loyalty and gift cards module to Magento and we also wanted to add a new POS which worked seamlessly with the loyalty scheme. Magently implement all that on our client's website and also supported and fixed any other issues that came along the way. In October they also migrated our site to a better host. The process was seamless.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

2 Project Managers and 3 developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The website has seen a huge growth in sales 150% on average year on year. A lot of issue we had with the speed of the checkout have been resolved. They loyalty scheme was also a success. We've also just completed a seamless upgrade of Magento core.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

They use slack which is great for communication. We agree timelines with the project manager and lead developer.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They are true professionals, honest with their work, hard working and very knowledgeable with Magento. They have implemented this system to push updates from staging to live which is very efficient and with very little downtime. I always ask their opinion on new modules and anything else we plan to do on the website.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No. I am pretty happy with Magently and would recommend them to anyone who needs a Magento development partner.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work for a company called Curaytor. We are in the real estate marketing, advertising, and technology space. Our mission is to connect and empower the best agents to dream bigger and accomplish more.

I am the Product Manager at Curaytor. I work closely with development and design to understand the problems our client base is experiencing and deliver solutions in the most seamless, beautiful, and simple way.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Chop-Chop, and what were your goals?

We have worked with Chop Chop front end developers for years! The most recent tool we worked with them on was our new Email Marketing Tool with the addition of a visual campaign builder that absolutely blew our customers away. Our old email marketing tool had become outdated, clunky, and quite difficult to maintain.

We decided to rebuild it from the ground up and revolutionize the entire experience. This was the first of our major tools that we "revamped" for our clients and it's safe to say we set the bar very high for our next few releases.

SOLUTION

How did you select Chop-Chop and what were the deciding factors?

We've been impressed with Chop-Chop's work time and time again and the two developers that we work with have truly become an integral part of our team. I can't imagine embarking on a new project without them at this point.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We met with other departments at the beginning of the process to understand the flows and processes that we are not super close to. We asked both internal team members and clients what parts of the existing solution were the most frustrating so that we could be sure that the critical "must-have" elements were accomplished as a result of this re-build.

From there, the team put together a quick clickable prototype to ensure we were on the right path. Once designs were finalized, we established what was to be included in the MVP for user testing. Following user testing, we iterated on the existing solution to make it even easier and accommodate our clients' needs and workflows.

A few weeks leading up to the release, we "ate our own dog food" by giving the internal team members access to use our newest technology in an effort to have more eyes on it and catch any last-minute critical bugs. The release was a huge success and as I mentioned, has set the bar very high for future products. We used Gitlab, Buddy, JS (Typescript, React, Slate, Node.js, Puppeteer)

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had two front end engineers working with us full time for this project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We sent out a CSAT survey following the release and had 93% positive feedback, with a majority of 5/5 stars. We have also seen an increase in product usage. In the first two days following the release, nearly 25% of our customer base had used the new feature already. Given our company's history with product updates and releases, this is notable and a huge win.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

We talked daily and met formally via Zoom Video at least once every 10 days or so (sometimes more, depending on where we were in the process). We communicated through Slack and established tasks in Trello.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The level of skill the two developers we work with have is very impressive. They are excellent communicators, contribute meaningfully to our conversations, and have truly become a part of the team. Their attention to detail has been very impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Not really. Like any new release, there were a few bugs that would pop up here and there, but the team was quick to fix them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Character Type creates typefaces for retail and custom work for small and international brands. Henning Skibbe founded Character Type in 2018. Ha and his team are located in Hamburg/Germany.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Chop-Chop, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a Wordpress based shop solution to sell typeface licenses to designers, art directors and the public.

SOLUTION

How did you select Chop-Chop and what were the deciding factors?

We had seen some of the shop solutions Chop-Chop had created in the past for all kinds of products and also for licensing. They asked the right questions and didn’t settle for easy answers.

To create a shop for licensing is a complicated matter to make licenses combinable and apply the correct discounts. Chop Chop offered good concepts for all our needs.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The goal was to create a WP based shop with easy options to select typefaces and licenses and to make a smooth checkout process for the customers. They used and adapted Woocommerce and the plugins Germanized.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with two people, a project manager and a developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The shop runs smooth. Customers can do exactly what we planned: Easy product selection and smooth checkout.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

When necessary we spoke on the phone, but we put all important decisions into writing. We used the app Active Collab« for all small and large issues and for communications.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They impressed with thoughtfulness, deep background knowledge, and willingness to not take the easy way. They always were quick to answer questions and solve issues.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a digital health B2B2C company based in germany, targeting the biggest german companies who are looking for a digital health solution for their employees. As the CMO I am responsible for all marketing activities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Chop-Chop, and what were your goals?

Our website was outdated and we wanted to give it a fresh look and a new technical background. For the look we worked with a design agency, but since we don't have many developers for marketing, we approached Chop-Chop to handle the development work as our IT-team had already had a great experience with them in the past. The chop-chop team worked as an external development team that took over all tasks for the relaunch of the website.

SOLUTION

How did you select Chop-Chop and what were the deciding factors?

We worked with them in the past, not me myself, but our development team worked with them and it always turned out to be successful.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Once we finished the work on the visual design, we were about to hand over the project to chop-chop. The designs that were made had to be implemented into a new wordpress and the wordpress backend needed to be setup for our marketers to work with it in daily life. They provided us a test-wordpress scenario and we tested and setup the whole website during the time period of may-september. all of the pages were designed by the marketers, chop-chop developed all components based on the designs as well as the backend.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

one project manager and 2-3 developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

since launching September 9.9.2020 we are very happy with how we can work with the new website and the tools given with the wordpress that has been setup. it is easy to use for us and chop-chop developers were very hands-on when we wished to adapt a feature to be more practical for us. We have received good feedback about the website, most importantly have we tripled organic google traffic after the relaunch.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Since I handled the whole project, which included the design agency as well, I connected Chop-chop with the designers. we used the tool the designers proposed and chop-chop worked within that tool. I was able to check the status of the development process in the activecollab, while the actual developments could be used in the wordpress test-scenario. we had about 3-4 video calls to talk about the project, but most communication went via activecollab and email.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The developers we worked with were very hands-on and fast. They made suggestions for improvements and found solutions for us to solve bugs or things that weren't super handy. I felt like though this was a corona-project without personal meetings, all people involved gave their all.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

project communication in the beginning could have been better, but also from our part. the project management from design to development was something that wasn't running smoothly and I would monitor and manage this more directly the next time. But this was handled professionally after all and the whole project turned out to be a success that I would repeat right away if necessary.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager for an online media company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Magently?

We needed some website development done.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They have worked with us on several projects. 
Typically, we start by presenting our ideas and design mockups. They make suggestions if they discover problems along the way. Recently, they made our new homepage, taking on all technical responsibilities. The design was done internally, and I handled the QA. We also count on them to run Magento for our platform.

What is the team composition?

There are five full-stack developers and a project manager. They have a QA person that works with us, as needed.

How did you come to work with Magently?

We partly chose them because they’re a smaller company.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about €360,000 (approximately $429,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2017, and it’s an ongoing partnership.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We measure success by having happy customers and sales. Our success can be somewhat attributed to the work Magently has done for us, but it’s difficult to specify metrics. We are satisfied overall.

How did Magently perform from a project management standpoint?

We set goals for deadlines, and they communicate well if they can’t deliver on time. Recently, we have been doing framework updates, listing prioritized items. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They communicate well always strive to improve. They try to understand our business in order to help us more effectively.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They come across cocky at times and a few of their skills could be sharper.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Prioritize communication, and work closely with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the team lead of the e-commerce department of a beverage company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Magently?

We wanted developers for our B2B e-commerce shop.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built us a website using Magento and connected it to SAP. They implemented several key features including tracking.

What is the team composition?

We work with 3–5 people including a project manager, IT specialist, and developers. 

How did you come to work with Magently?

They were recommended to me by a friend. Their price was reasonable. 

How much have you invested in them?

I think we’ve spent between €50,000–€100,000 (approximately $56,000–$112,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2019. They doing ongoing maintenance and developing new features.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’re able to complete things in a timely manner and provide results for us. Even when there are bugs, they’re able to fix them quickly. 

How did Magently perform from a project management standpoint?

We use GitLab and Microsoft Teams, internally, they use Jira. I’m happy with their project management. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re fast and deliver good work. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

At the moment, no. I’m really happy with their work. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

If you need Magento development support, I highly recommend them. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a bicycle company that provides and produces bicycles. For each product we sell, we donate one to a school in a developing country.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Chop-Chop?

We needed to build a site that would be easy to navigate, find, and use. Ideally, their solution would be better than our previous site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our team hired another partner to design the solution. Then, we handed the project over to them for the e-commerce site development. They built the platform and connected the Shopify e-commerce shop to the solution.

What is the team composition?

To begin the project, there were three teammates assigned to our account. After that, we mostly communicated with our project manager. 

How did you come to work with Chop-Chop?

Our CEO was introduced to them and decided to work with them almost immediately.  

How much have you invested with them?

We spent roughly between €7,000–€9,000 (approximately $7,700–$9,900 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted for three months in the spring of 2019. However, they still provided updates to the site after that period. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The delivered quality, and working with them is easy. They had worked out a system that allowed us to ask and recieve answers to questions we had about the development. Our users have commented that the site is clean and easy to navigate. They’ve also praised the site’s general appearance. 

How did Chop-Chop perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed very well. We had weekly updates during which all three of them were always on the call. If there were any questions, we were able to log into their platform to ask questions. It was smooth and easy to work together.

Having a dedicated project manager to the account added significant value to the development. Through our weekly calls, it’s clear that he’s completed dedicate to our team. Even though he definitely has other responsibilities, we received a considerable amount of attention. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They provide personalized contact with our team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There have been times where we’ve had questions about our contract and changes to it throughout the duration of the project. Sometimes it was difficult to reach them with those questions, so we would’ve liked a little more clarity in that area. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

This is a very good company that can build a good-looking site with a personal touch. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Doofinder is an on-site search service that provides fast and accurate results and integrates with any website with very little configuration. With Doofinder Site Search our customers are confident visitors are finding what they are looking for regardless of the number of products in their site.

I'm a Full Stack Developer with more than 10 years of experience working on web projects. I'm the Project Manager of some of the E-commerce plugins Doofinder offers to make customers' life easier when integrating Doofinder in their sites.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Magently?

E-commerce platforms change constantly. Although we want provide integrations for all the big ones, some of them are very complex and require qualified developers.

We decided to delegate development to Magently because they have the knowledge and expertise necessary to provide the most appropriate solutions to the problems involved in the integration of a platform like Magento with an external API for something as critical as the internal search of a website. This way we could focus on our core business: search.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to make installation of Doofinder as easy as possible in Magento platforms so the main goals were: 

• Provide users an easy way to index data in Doofinder.
• Integrate Doofinder search results in the regular search workflow of Magento.
• Provide an easy way to integrate Doofinder Javascript layers in Magento template layout.

Reaching these goals we would gain a lot of potential customers from the Magento ecosystem.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were considering three different agencies but we liked they were focused on the platform (Magento), they were located in Europe, so we can communicate without any lag, and they had competitive prices.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Before we started working with Magently, we had an initial version of our module for Magento 1.x. I did it myself with a lot of help and inspiration of others open source code. It was a fast way of having "something" but it was not very professional. It initially worked but, as customers' needs increased, we clearly saw that it was not enough.

We sent the code to Magently so they could review it and build something better from it. And they did. Current version works in Magento 1.6 or greater, and Magento is currently in 1.9. When Magento 2 was launched, we decided to delegate the development of the new module to Magently.

Our collaboration with Magently is based on specific requests of features and changes to be done in the modules. We usually have a very clear idea of what we want. Sometimes we don't. In both cases Magently performs any required previous analysis and provides feedback so we can take decisions.

Magently also has started to help with customer support "under the hood" when there're cases that require development skills to be solved. This way fixes are faster because sometimes they can provide the fix at the same time as the answer for the customer.

What was the team composition?

Working with Magently we always have a Project Manager available to talk with us, in charge of organizing all the tasks we send them (and sometimes it's a lot of work). The Project Manager assigns resources depending on the difficulty of the tasks but it usually is one developer at a time.

As Magently is paid by development hours consumed, if they have to allocate more development resources they always ask for confirmation (because, of course, time is consumed twice as fast).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We currently have more than 1,000 search engines running in Magento platforms.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project Management was done via email / webapp (in fact emails were sent by the support webapp). Everyday, your assigned Project Manager provides a report of the credits (hours) remaining in the project and the credits consumed by the tasks in progress or finalized since the last report. Communication is fluid. Sometimes they're busy due to external issues but they do their best when that happens.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Developing for Magento platforms is very difficult and errors are common. Other times communication problems arise. Developers and Project Managers may change over time… and we could continue development with a different agencie and probably their developers would do the work right.

So… what are Magently strengths? Ok, apart from development, I think that, as a company, they are very clear that the customer comes first, without giving up their way of working or their principles. They're flexible when necessary, which makes them a pleasure to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Pricing increased a lot since we started to work with them. They provided custom pricing due to the nature of the project but I think that's a big area of improvement. But I think that's something all customers say.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Data Space provides IT infrastructure & administration services based on our own certified Data Center. Our main products are dedicated servers, private bare-metal cloud as well as DDoS & WAF protection.

I am mainly responsible for technical support as well as the creation and implementation of solutions that improve our customer experience.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Chop-Chop?

Outsourcing frontend development due to insufficient numbers of qualified in-house staff.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed a brand new admin panel for our website and looked to handle it in the most efficient manner. The ultimate goal was to get a modular, hierarchic code that would be easy to integrate with our.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We worked with Chop-Chop on several occasions before. We had mostly needed simple WordPress websites before but their flawless execution assured us we didn't need to look any further. It is really hard to find true WordPress experts who actually specialize in this CMS.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We already had a solution for the backend but we needed expert frontend developers to provide HTML/CSS and JS. The project involved creating the admin panel for our website.

Apart from the coding, they provided assistance with creating responsive design and many small effects like hover effects and dropdowns to improve the customer experience.

What was the team composition?

The team was composed of two frontend developers and a project manager. The developers worked hand in hand to produce particular pages and fill them with JS functionality.

The project manager handled some of the communication and made sure all assets were in place. We were able to work within they project management tool and could track the progress easily.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Since the project involved creating an internal admin panel, we can't say it had a tremendous impact on our business. It definitely made it easier for us to manage our internal resources and we've been using it ever since, never finding any issues worth mentioning.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management was very effective and transparent. The project has been broken down into tasks on day one and reliable milestones were set. We were given access to Chop-Chop's project management tool and could track the progress at all times, as well as directly communicate with the developers if needed. We also scheduled weekly Zoom meetings with the entire team to go through the essentials and possible blockers.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They put a lot of effort into understanding our needs thoroughly, offered their own point of view (based on tremendous experience in similar projects) and helped choose the best way to approach this project.

Are there any areas for improvement?

It sometimes happens we need to wait a bit longer for them to start working on a project due to not enough developers available at the current moment.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the owner of Part Catalog, an automotive aftermarket accessories business selling online since 2012.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Magently?

Due to the end-of-life schedule of Magento 1, we needed a firm to migrate our entire e-commerce website to the Magento 2 platform. Magently was hired to migrate our entire e-commerce operations to Magento 2.3.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to develop and replicate all our basic and custom functionality on the Magento 2 platform.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We’d previously worked with Magently based on a recommendation from another trusted e-commerce professional. Magently had intimate knowledge of our Magento 1 codebase and operations, so they were our only choice.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They designed, developed, configured, and launched our entire e-commerce operations on Magento 2. This includes creating advanced custom functionality, configurations, page-speed optimizations, data migrations, and extensive cross-browser and quality-control testing. They also handled the migration itself, working directly with our hosting provider. Post-migration they continued to be available for bug fixes and any critical issues that arose, as well as some development.

What was the team composition?

The project consisted of around four developers and one project manager. Due to scheduling and expertise, 1–2 other developers jumped onto the project as needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Because we’re now on Magento 2, we no longer have the threat of the Magento 1 end-of-life. As a result, we’ll be able to maintain best security practices and patches. Additionally, because Magently developed our website with best practices, we're able to easily extend it to cover future functionality requirements.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We communicated via Slack and Redmine. This was the first time I'd used Redmine, and I was very impressed with it. It was very effective at allowing us, as the client, to track progress without bugging the developers.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their communication and professionalism stood out, as did their project managers and all the developers. Some of our requirements were rather difficult, but Magently was professional in helping us develop appropriate solutions.

Are there any areas for improvement?

This project went very well. I would advise Magently to extend their Redmine usage to other clients as well, as I strongly believe this was critical to us having a positive workflow and communication.