Hello Amigo

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I own a financial planning company in El Paso, Texas that specifically deals with Gen X and Gen Y medical professionals. I’m the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hello Amigo?

I had a website prior to my work with them, but I was looking for a website that looked better than what I had and was able to translate to people finding my business online by ranking higher on Google searches than I’d been able to before.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They did the entire design and layout of the website and then helped me with some of the strategy and optimization as well. We scaled back the content to make the overall site more concise and tweaked a lot of the key features and functionalities of the site.

Once we had a strong foundation established with the site, we did some keyword research and SEO work to help the site perform better across a variety of Google searches.

What is the team composition?

I worked closely with Brandon (Founder, Hello Amigo) and his wife who acts as the project manager. They have about 3–4 others that work with them on the project.

How did you come to work with Hello Amigo?

I just found them through Google about five years ago and met with them at the time. I decided to go with a cheaper developer at first, but the results really showed it, and I decided to get them to redevelop the site.

How much have you invested with them?

I think the total cost was around $15,000–$18,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We were working together from November 2018–March 2019. They continue to host the site, and we have a few more improvements planned, but there isn’t any work going on now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The website is a lot more intuitive and easier to use on both the front- and backend. In the six months since the SEO work we’ve done, I’ve gotten more e-mails and calls for meetings than I did in the 3–4 years with my other website. I’ve also had at least six incoming leads from people who just found the site off of a search on Google.

How did Hello Amigo perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re really on top of everything. We were pretty close to all of the deadlines we established, and they were communicative over both phone and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their real strength is the creativity of their team and the quality of their designs. They take a completely design-centric approach to web development, and that’s what I really wanted since finance is boring enough as it is. I wanted my website to be more like a lifestyle website and they were really able to make it stand out more than I could have hoped.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Everyone can always improve, but I think they did a good job with everything we asked of them. I know they admit to some weaknesses in terms of content creation, but they are already working to remedy that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would suggest that you go in with a rough idea of what you want your business to be so that you can translate that vision to them, and they can figure out if they’ll be able to help you make it a reality. If you want a boring website, they’re probably not the right partners for you.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the systems and technologies coordinator for the County of El Paso Elections Department. We’re on a contract for the cities of El Paso, Horizon, Socorro, and various other jurisdictions in the County of El Paso. I provide the connectivity, choosing our floating systems, and I also handle the daily website updates, posting calendars and other tasks.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hello Amigo?

We needed to create a site that was both informative and user-friendly for constituents. Unfortunately, our previous website vendor, based in Florida, didn’t provide great customer service and it was hard to have a face-to-face conversation to address our concerns. We decided to move to a local agency.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

One thing that’s helped us is the geolocation. It has a voter type in their specific location, and it tells voters their closest polling site. We wanted to pull in a greater percentage of voters to El Paso by bringing awareness to the county and then get more people registered to vote. The site also needed to provide a calendar for voters of the various elections. And it can be viewed in Spanish.

In addition to the website, they’re developing a mobile application for us. It also has a geolocation features. When a voter goes to a polling site, the app will tell them how many people are currently being processed there. It’ll tell them the time it will take them to go through the voting process. The app is being built for both iOS and Android, but I’m not aware of the technologies being used. They’ve told us, and it’s in the proposal. It’s not finished, but we’re shooting for the beginning of July. Hello Amigo is doing the design for the app as well as the development.

They also produced a commercial that ran on TV networks during the presidential election. It was basically a commercial to get people to vote.

How did you come to work with Hello Amigo?

We had heard of a couple vendors locally, and several of them submitted proposals. We saw the work that Hello Amigo had provided another government agency, Visit El Paso, and we were confident they could deliver what we wanted.

How much have you invested with Hello Amigo?

I don’t have those numbers.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2016, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since the website was launched, our voter registration has increased by 150,000–200,000. The community loves our website. They say it’s user-friendly, clear, concise, and something that’s different. A lot of people compare it favorably to other counties’ sites, such as Dallas or Travis Counties. They like the design and the user-friendliness of our site.

How did Hello Amigo perform from a project management standpoint?

They were on time. They gave us a schedule of what would happen in the different phases, and they got the job done.

What did you find most impressive about Hello Amigo?

They have a modern approach, and they’re more technologically-driven than the previous vendor we had. They cater to our specific needs, whereas our previous vendor used templates and took a more generic approach.

​​​​​​Are there any areas Hello Amigo could improve?

I don’t see anything. They’re great.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an umbrella organization. We have two organizations under that, one side which is tourism and convention development and one side which is event driven. I’m the Digital Marketing Manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hello Amigo?

We were launching a new website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Mainly website design. They built the website from start to finish. They continue to provide us with daily maintenance assistance and new pages on the site.

How did you come to work with Hello Amigo?

The organization put out a bid to several web development companies in the area. They were the one that we narrowed down and that was based on services offered and price.

How much have you invested with Hello Amigo?

We have spent $33,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial development project is complete but we are continuing work with them because we continue to use maintenance hours with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have a little over 50,000 unique visits a month and average 2 ½ pages viewed per visit.

How did Hello Amigo perform from a project management standpoint?

They were excellent. We had no issues with them.

What did you find most impressive about Hello Amigo?

I think it’s their response time to any issues that come up. It was real critical for us to have an agency that was going to be able to respond to phone calls and emails within minutes, and they do that for us.

Are there any areas Hello Amigo could improve?

Nothing that really comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are Paso del Norte Health foundation. We are a private foundation that gives grants to non-profit organizations in our service region which include the El Paso area, New Mexico and Mexico. I am the Director of Communications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hello Amigo?

We needed a completely new design on our website. We were trying to get more traffic. We were also putting in some social media elements and some database information that we previously had but lost when we had done the redesign with a previous vendor.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a complete redesign. We hadn’t launched any type of newsletter or social media applications to the website, so they assisted with putting that on for us. We have a database that we currently use online. What we wanted to do was implement our database onto the website so that our grantees could see the programming that was taking place.

How did you come to work with Hello Amigo?

Any large project for the foundation goes through a bidding process. We had about nine or ten bids submitted. We narrowed it down to three. We brought each agency in for follow up conversations and ultimately selected Hello Amigo.

How much have you invested with Hello Amigo?

It was about $50,000. That included hosting and everything.

What is the status of this engagement?

It’s ongoing. They are hosting our site and we have a maintenance agreement with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve really had a positive feedback from the website. We have some sister foundations that have taken the design we have and have mimicked it so we all have the same look, which has been a positive thing for us.

How did Hello Amigo perform from a project management standpoint?

Excellent. They were always very attentive to any changes or requests that we had. I feel like I’m very close to each one of the staff members. They assist me right away with anything I have questions about.

What did you find most impressive about Hello Amigo?

They were very customer service oriented. They didn’t realize the magnitude of the project until they were picked by us, but they seemed fair and committed to what they had obligated themselves to, which was great for us.

Are there any areas Hello Amigo could improve?

Maybe they could’ve done a little more investigation of the site and of our work prior to committing to the bid. I think they found that it was more work than they originally foresaw, but I think that would’ve been true with any agency.