Gravity Switch

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're a business and technical school based in New York City.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I was director of marketing and had a role in the admissions department as well.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Gravity Switch?

The school had an antiquated website that was not sales-driven or marketing-driven – it was more educationally driven. They needed a website redo.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

It started with a short brand strategy project, but most of the work was around web design. We scrapped the entire old website, and they built an entirely new Drupal site for us. We used agile development methods that involved a three-day quick build where they came onsite, and we locked down myself and some other principals for three days of aggressive and hard site building, where their programmers were both onsite and offsite as their headquarters, working at the same time we were. We essentially built the site up in three days from a structural standpoint. Then, I spent the next few weeks working with them to fill in the details of the site.

I continued to work with them for more than two years on continuing to modify the site, add continuous content, tweak it for SEO [search engine optimization], and they also handled the pay-per-click program and Google AdWords campaign for us. It was more than two-and-a-half-year relationship before we parted ways, and I left the school.

How did you come to work with Gravity Switch?

I was hired at the very end of the selection process. Frankly, I can't give you much in terms of the process of how they were chosen. They were handed to me, and that's who I had to work with, and I was very thankful because they were outstanding.

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

It was around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

There were multiple timelines. The up-and-running timeline was three days as it was a blitz build. In three days, we had a functional site. Then, during the next four weeks, we filled in the major holes but, overall, we worked together for years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I'm going to give you the most important information from a for-profit educational institution's perspective, and that is it increased student enrollment at the school. Within two and a half months, our inquiries doubled. Leads increased, conversions increased, and the number of students sitting in the school increased because of Gravity Switch's work.

They were the total package for us – branding, web design, SEO [search engine optimization], and PPC [pay per click] – they did it all for us, and they did it really well.

What distinguishes Gravity Switch from other providers?

Their people, that's what makes them different. Everyone that I engaged with was unique, energized, outspoken, willing to dig in and help out and, most importantly, very helpful in training our people to maintain and update the site.

One time when we were redoing our landing pages two years into our relationship, they sent down our project manager, but they also sent down one of their designers from Massachusetts to New York – at no additional charge, just included in what our monthly fee was. The work that came out of that two-day session was incredible.

Is there anything Gravity Switch could have improved or done differently?

No. I'm 100 percent satisfied with our relationship.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I worked with Gravity Switch when I was at a small technical college in New England.

What is your position?

I was the director of marketing and communications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Gravity Switch?

Having a sharp-looking website is crucial in today's admissions environment. We had a very dated website that was really detracting from our brand, and that was manifesting itself in falling applications.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They created an entirely new website for us on the Drupal platform. It was development work on both back-end and frontend. Our information technology team at the college was only minimally involved, so it was really entirely Gravity Switch's work. The college had recently gone through a rebrand, and they did a great job of capturing that work in the new website.

How did you come to work with Gravity Switch?

We selected them from a group of a final three web development and branding teams. Price was definitely a consideration, but what attracted us to Gravity Switch was their iterative approach. We were interested in having a website that we could launch very quickly and make changes to in time, rather than attempting to create a website that was perfect from the get go. They were able to show us a plethora of these agile development projects that they had worked on in the past. It was clear that they were experts at it.

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

It was in the $50,000 to $100,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We would have started the project in November 2013, and it launched in June 2014. I should say that although Gravity Switch is well known for moving websites along very quickly. Ours took longer based on challenges on our end, not as a result of anything that they did.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I have to say that I left the institution just a few months after the website was launched, so I wasn't there to experience the full benefit of the new website, but we did see some very significant changes almost immediately. We had people digging much deeper into the website and viewing pages for a lot longer than we had previously. Our bounce rate dropped from 72 percent to 15 percent. The number of people who clicked to apply with the college website grew very significantly. Overall, we were very impressed.

What distinguishes Gravity Switch from other providers?

They have an exceptional project management team. Questions were answered thoroughly and quickly, and they did a very good job tracking requests and making sure that changes were made on time. They offered exceptional customer service.

Is there anything Gravity Switch could have improved or done differently?

I think understanding the true scope of a project before it launches is critical. I think we probably could have been pushed a little bit harder by Gravity Switch, so that both sides would more fully understand the full extent of the work and the time investment that would be required on our end in order to launch the new site.