coolblueweb

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company is located outside of Seattle. We are a pop-culture collectible company, producing different lines of collectible figures within the market.

What is your position?

I am one of the managers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with coolblueweb?

We've always been a business-to-business company. We decided that we wanted to branch out and start a consumer venture, without undercutting any of the retailers that had helped us reach our success. We did that by launching a subscription box service, which was followed by an additional two. We had a customer website which was only for display purposes. Users couldn't make purchases or interact with it significantly. Launching a subscription box was a new venture for us for which we needed a web developer. We didn't have the necessary customer experience or the back-end experience in order to efficiently build our business and manage customer requests and queries. coolblueweb offered some of their WordPress expertise, which is the platform on which we manage our subscription website. We went to them with the issues that we were having with our current web developer and took things forward from there.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

When we started working with coolblueweb, we were close to launching our second site. The frontend looked the same to our customers, but the backend was converted to coolblueweb's system. We've continued to work with them in developing more features in order to have a better customer experience and grow our business even more. We have an ongoing cycle of projects through which we identify the next big step to take.

How did you come to work with coolblueweb?

I was not involved in the selection process. I know that their owner and lead developer sat down with our team, talked about their WordPress expertise and what they could bring to the table. We were evaluating a possible solution with other developers as well as with our current one. We were able to get things from coolblueweb that were not provided by other people. Where others said that a particular problem is simply something that we would have to deal with, coolblueweb actually brought a solution. They were solution-oriented in exactly the way we needed.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

I don't have this information.

What is the status of this engagement?

The conversion was made in August of 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

coolblueweb was able to give us solutions around what turned out to be relatively simple issues that other developers weren't able to address. For instance, we didn't offer coupons when we launched. Standard WordPress functionality has a box built-in to the shopping cart asking for a code. We had asked how we could remove that field. We don't offer coupons, so we don't want to tease customers with the prospect that they could receive a discount. We were simply told it would have to be something to live with. In the meantime, we kept getting requests from customers asking where they could find discounts. coolblueweb was able to get that field out for us in 10 minutes.

They've been a solution-based partner for us. Things that seemed impossible for other people were simple for them. There were other things which were not so simple, but which coolblueweb nonetheless helped us achieve.

In terms of metrics, when we started working with them we had roughly 50,000 subscribers and around 8,000 open tickets at any given point in time. There were many inquiries from subscribers, largely due to a non-user-friendly experience. This means that roughly 15% of our customers were coming back with inquiries.

Currently, we have around 150,000 subscribers and have between 300-1,000 open tickets at any time, depending on our current development cycle. We've absolutely brought down customer problems and concerns. Those numbers speak wonders for coolblueweb. 

coolblueweb has performed well. We've seen results both in terms of revenue but also in terms of the experience had by our customers.

What distinguishes coolblueweb from other providers?

They're solution-oriented and proactive. We are a good fit for each other in the sense that we don't only want solutions for our company but also want to manage things for ourselves.

Is there anything coolblueweb could have improved or done differently?

There were times in which I'd have to go back to coolblueweb again and again in order to make small changes to the website, in terms of adjusting a text, etc. I eventually asked them if that could be something that I could do myself, and they were very responsive in teaching me how to. This issue didn't actually stem from the fact that they were doing a bad job, on the contrary, coolblueweb was able to accommodate everything that we asked.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We distribute travel pillows and other products in the United States marketplace. We're located in western Seattle.

What is your position?

I am the principal.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with coolblueweb?

We were doing all of our transactions on Amazon, so we wanted some diversification in terms of sales avenues. We wanted to build an HTML site with e-commerce capabilities.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We initially used coolblueweb for web design as well as SEO [search engine optimization] services. The goal was to build an HTML Magento site that was searchable and optimizable, compared to the Flash site we'd previously had. We haven't used many of their SEO services. Because we would build an HTML site, it would already be searchable, so we didn't see a large need for this.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Their original estimate was between $5,000 to $7,000, depending on what the requirements of the site would end up being. The total cost was around $9,000 because of our changed requests.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2011. We continue to use their services in order to do minor tweaks, such as stock updates, for our products. Because we're a small business, there hasn't been much work for coolblueweb to do.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The project went well. I don't think that coolblueweb made much money on us as a client because they had to reassess their capabilities during the course of the project. After it was completed, they started marketing to clients, stating that they don't specialize in icon or creative design, but rather coding. This was largely fostered through my business partner's strong creative background. It eventually saved coolblueweb a lot of headache.

How did coolblueweb perform from a project management standpoint?

They were located two miles away from our company in Seattle. Whenever I had an issue, I could drop by coolblueweb's office. They've moved downtown, so I no longer have that ability. Their team is also substantially bigger. They've grown from three to 15 members.

Magento was just landing on the marketplace at the time of our collaboration. coolblueweb has fine-tuned their model in order to cater to it since then. They were initially concerned about which platform would take off. I haven't had a problem with the solution in five to six years of use.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a coffee grocer located on Camano Island in Washington State. Our main business consists of a coffee subscription program which we call the Coffee Lovers' Club. Most coffee grocers specialize in wholesale or office coffee, whereas we're almost strictly an at-home coffee subscription.

What is your position?

I am the Marketing Director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with coolblueweb?

Our main business is subscription-based, so there is a whole behind-the-scenes process in order to manage it and make sure that the people involved are getting the right coffee with the right grind at the right time. The other thing that makes us unique is that we try to give clients as many options as possible. Many of the out-of-the-box subscription platforms we've looked at limit customers to getting a shipment every two to four weeks. We were trying to send people coffee in bulk quantities.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We needed more flexibility in terms of when people could request shipments. coolblueweb built a custom solution using bluCommerce that allowed us to do that.

We were also working with another proprietary e-commerce system built particularly for coffee grocers. We ran into some limitations with it and had to develop some specific functionalities. There were some issues with the work done by a previous contracting firm, so we had coolblueweb make a facelift for the frontend part of it. They gave us a quote on the work but also mentioned that there were some core backend problems with what we'd built. We needed to take a different approach to it in order to match our outlined goals.

We spent six weeks writing scopes and going back-and-forth in order to make sure that we'd get exactly what we wanted. In terms of development time, the work only took one to two months. We then only had to take our existing data, clean it up, and put it into the system. It turned out to be the hardest part of the whole process. coolblueweb helped us through this as well, which was more than what we'd anticipated. They initially only took care of the programming necessary to get the system where we wanted it. There was a lot of support, education, and advice that followed.

How did you come to work with coolblueweb?

We wanted to facelift our previously completed project. We were thus looking for frontend experts. My predecessor shopped around within some agencies in Seattle. He liked coolblueweb the best out of all of those. It turned out that what we wanted and what we had didn't match up. There were elements not available inherently in bluCommerce, like one-page checkout. Because most of our sales are online, we have a club signup process. New members receive a free pound of coffee, which needed to become a simplified, one-page process. It tremendously reduced our bounce rate. coolblueweb provided a lot of guidance in helping us understand what we were asking for and how to get it.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The development happened in a few stages. The first scope had a cost of around $50,000. We continued on a maintenance plan within the next few months, for our data normalization process. Their rate was around $130 per hour. We then worked on a mail integration which took place in January of 2015. It had a cost of $5,000. The total cost overall was around $75,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first started looking for a firm in March of 2014. There was a six-week back-and-forth period in order to determine what we were looking for. Coding didn't start until the end of May. The code was completed at the end of August, and the platform was launched in September, 2014. We then addressed some issues concerning data normalization, which took another three months to fix. The difficulty was making the data match our system. coolblueweb did anything imaginable to fix our data problems. The problems we had were with a few hundred members out of thousands. Those few hundreds still needed to be solved.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Everyone in our team would say that coolblueweb's work was integral in making our company function. My day job used to be basically fixing orders. They've given us a new foundation which has transformed our activity from night to day.

Our company has been around for the last 15 years. Within the last two years, the company has run better than ever. In the past, we were mostly applying Band-Aids and hobbling along because we didn't have good foundations.

What distinguishes coolblueweb from other providers?

The things that they've taught me in terms of programming were outside of anything they were responsible for. They're teaching us how to run things better overall. Their owner was willing to talk to us about what we were doing in terms of high-level business, from his perspective as an entrepreneur. He's been helpful with providing insights regarding e-commerce and the daily management of the business. His early-on guidance helped us clean up a bad scenario. We had already spent at least $75,000 on our previous build.

coolblueweb built our solution and delivered it. It was an incentive for them to have us call their company more often, but that wasn't their intention. They taught us the necessary skills to manage it ourselves.

Is there anything coolblueweb could have improved or done differently?

There were developers which proved more qualified than others throughout the run of the project. I understand that coolblueweb has to bring in new blood and train them, but we noticed a difference in the communication style of some of their team. I understand that new people will not be as good as their seniors, but if I had to mention something, it would be the communication during the later projects.

There was a more recent project which involved moving entire servers to a company recommended by coolblueweb. It was a huge job, and the communication during it was a bit lacking in terms of letting us know what had been moved and what hadn't. These are the only complaints during the course of our almost two year collaboration.