Efinitytech

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the president and owner of Northwest Outdoor Lighting. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Efinity Tech?

The first website I created and spent money for was terrible. I wanted to redesign the whole thing. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Efinity Tech looked at the website I had in place, made a list of everything wrong with it, and suggested how each issue could be improved. I didn’t want to spend more money on a site that had just been completed, so Efinity Tech came up with ideas for tweaks and improvements. After a few months of trying to fix the site on our own, we gave up and started from scratch. Efinity Tech built us a brand-new site and has been managing our SEO over the last 3 years.

The website was built using VSM, which is a content management system created by Efinity Tech.

How did you come to work with Efinity Tech?

My original site was built on WordPress. I knew that I needed to write more blog posts to increase my Google hits. I was trying to put something new out there every week, but I wasn’t seeing any results. I met Efinity Tech’s principal at a business meet-and-greet and told him about my problems. He pulled my site up on his phone and told me immediately that it wasn’t being picked up because it lacked SEO-friendly content. I had spent thousands of dollars on a website and didn’t want to spend thousands more on another without knowing if it would work. But, the fact that he was willing to provide consultation for a small monthly fee made me feel comfortable with the arrangement. I looked at other sites built by Efinity Tech and thought that they looked awesome. We took a big leap of faith with them, and it paid off. I have been getting phone calls since the day after launching the new site.

How much have you invested with Efinity Tech?

The cost of their work has been a bit above $6,000 per year for SEO and development services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Efinity Tech in the fall of 2014 and went through a tweaking process for a couple of months before we decided to start from scratch. The site went live in January 2015. We have been revamping that site over the last 2 months. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

Ever since the new site went live, my phone has been ringing. We revised and revamped the website in the last week and made it even better.

Based on the SEO reports I receive from Efinity Tech, I can see traffic increasing. It tripled or quadrupled once we launched the new site.

How did Efinity Tech perform from a project management standpoint?

I receive monthly reports that show which pages are doing well, how I can improve them, and whether I need to write a blog post with specific terminology for increasing traffic. I can send them emails asking for tweaks, and the team will work on those items within 24 hours. We’ve always been on target.

My main contact manages all the edits for the site, and I have access to the office manager as well. 

What did you find most impressive about Efinity Tech?

They shared expertise about site content and mentioned when something was not compatible with the web world. Efinity Tech has the knowledge and staff to enact helpful changes. For example, “Contact me” won’t attract any responses, but changing that content to “Give us a call today” created a 60% increase in calls, simply because the language is more powerful. It sounds simple, but their ideas have generated a substantial difference in our business calls.

In terms of SEO expertise, Efinity Tech stays current with trends in the field, and they know how to tweak and adjust keywords.

Are there any areas Efinity Tech could improve?

I can’t think of anything. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Barn Pros has been in business in the state of Washington for 25 years. We provide pre-engineered building kits. We started out with barns for the equestrian lover, but we also have barns for farms and agricultural use. We have barn-style garages and shops for people, and we have a line of barn apartments and barn-style homes. It’s a pretty niche market, and what we provide is a real systems approach to building itself. I’m the marketing coordinator.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Efinity Tech?

In 2013, we were in a position where we wanted to redo our websites, and we knew we wanted to work with someone local. We needed to have a really dynamic website that could grow with the company because we had some big goals we were aiming to achieve in the coming years. We knew we couldn’t implement them by the time that we had this new website, but we wanted to make sure we had a platform that could accommodate those things that we wanted to do.

We wanted to build out and have an e-commerce store. We wanted to have a dynamic ability to bring in different functionality to the website and create a good presentation for our products.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Efinity Tech provided their own proprietary software for web design, which worked really well for us because it wasn’t just a drag and drop template. It was something they could use their systems for but also custom design it for us. We can easily get in there and modify and change it, which we really liked because we were planning on adding and changing products or updating content pretty regularly. We had the capability to do that in-house, so being able to work with a system that could allow us to do that without having to call another company and have them make the change was the goal. Their platform is called VSM. They built the frontend and backend of the website.

Each person at Efinity wears a few hats. When you’re working with a small business, typically you work in several different departments. Their company is probably about five people. We mainly work with one person who helps us with the content, and they have another gentleman who does a lot of the behind the scenes work, and then another person who does the design work. It’s pretty apparent who you should speak with depending on the project that you have in mind.

They have a good team representation, and I always feel like my thoughts, ideas, or concerns can be translated pretty easily. Our new website is a completely different design. Because their platform is proprietary, they update it all the time and do their own changes and optimization for it.

How did you come to work with Efinity Tech?

I didn’t find them originally. I believe our general manager did some searching for different companies and found that Efinity Tech was a local company. He actually chose to go drive down and visit them and found that they had a lot in common. He decided that Efinity Tech would be a good fit for us.

How much have you invested with Efinity Tech?

We are their largest customer. We have fair pricing with them, but I don’t know how it compares to other firms.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2012, and the work is ongoing. We launched our website in November 2016. We plan on working with them for quite some time, and we really enjoy the functionality of our new website.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Our traffic year over year has gone up steadily and we hear nothing but really great reviews about our website. We have a huge amount of new users, bounce rates are pretty low, and our site duration is pretty high given the industry that we are in. People spend an average of three minutes on our website, which is a pretty long time. In the years’ time, we’ve got two million sessions on our site with 75% of that being new traffic. There are three million page views.

We anticipated a drop in traffic with our website launch last year, so we had a lot of different things in place to kind of ease that transition. They did a lot of work ahead of time to help offset any drop in traffic that might have come up, which was greatly appreciated.

A big part of our website when we launched with them in 2013 was creating a mobile-adaptive website. Since having a mobile-adaptive site, we saw our mobile traffic just in the last four years go from about 30% to about 55%. Their ability to develop a mobile-adaptive site was really important to us and is probably one of the big reasons why we went with them.

How did Efinity Tech perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve got a good system in place where we can communicate different projects, initiatives, or updates that we want to launch. They’ll give us an estimated timeline that they typically always meet. If anything comes up, they’re really good about reaching out and letting us know.

What did you find most impressive about Efinity Tech?

Even though I don’t know much about programming and coding, when I come up with an idea, Efinity Tech will always spend time thinking about it and letting me know if it’s possible or if not. If it’s possible, they let me know what kind of programming would be needed to make that happen. More often than not, it turns into something really great, and they can end up using that with their other clients as well. I really appreciate the open-mindedness. They are very open to learning new things and they respond really well to their customers’ needs. They are always willing to think outside the box.

Are there any areas Efinity Tech could improve?

No.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Fluid Motion is a recreation boat manufacturer based in Washington State. I’m the director of communications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Efinity Tech?

We have quite a bit of traffic going to our sites and wanted to work with someone who we could call in case we had an outage and needed someone to troubleshoot. We also had budget considerations.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Efinity did a complete redesign of two of our websites. We had very basic sites before, but now, we have a build-a-boat feature, an interactive event and boat show map, blog, newsletter capabilities and several other features. They built the sites on VSM which is Efinity's proprietary platform. I don't know the exact technologies that were used on the site, but there were at least six resources that worked on our site including the salesman, the president, the visual designer, and others on their team.

How did you come to work with Efinity Tech?

Someone else that worked at our company had worked with Efinity in the past. Their office is located a mile from ours. What set them apart was their cost and service.

How much have you invested with Efinity Tech?

We have spent under $25,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them 18 months ago. The project is completed but we still have a service contract with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

All the basic stats like time on site, traffic, etc. are up between 10% and 15%. Leads are hard to measure because we weren’t capturing them before these sites were upgraded. I know they’ve also increased, but I don’t know how much.

How did Efinity Tech perform from a project management standpoint?

It seems like they’re established and comfortable, which was another nice thing about working with them. They have an office where we can meet. I was meeting other agencies at coffee houses, which didn’t give me a lot of confidence. Efinity seems to know their roles. They’re all involved at different stages of the project. They were waiting on us more than we had to wait on them. They would implement things as soon as I would get back to them.

What did you find most impressive about Efinity Tech?

Their support is great. Multiple times a week I’ll send an email since our business is always changing and growing and our message needs to change. It doesn’t matter when I send an email, I’ll have a response in 45 minutes. The communication and service support is really what sold us in the first place, and one of the things that we value the most about the partnership now.

Are there any areas Efinity Tech could improve?

Their system is proprietary, which is nice and they provide the service. I would like more control on the backend as far as what we can do visually with the site. I don’t think the average user will feel that way, but I do. I don’t like bothering them with all my little changes, but they don’t seem to mind.