Imagine

BACKGROUND

Please describe your firm.

We are a staffing company. We give temporary and permanent placement. We’re based in the Washington, D.C., area, although our clients are throughout the country. We make placements in California, Chicago, New York, Florida, wherever our clients need assistance, we can help within the U.S. We have four lines of business. We have legal, IT, administration, administrative professionals, and accounting and finance for both temp and perm.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the co-founder of the company and president. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for the work with ImagineDesign?

We needed a website built. We fully believe in finding candidates and clients through the Internet. That is critical for us. One of our recruiters came from a marketing background. So, we felt very strongly about that. We wanted a website that was dynamic. We actually have software that is embedded in the website, so we needed somebody that knew what we were doing.

Our candidates must register online and submit their timesheet through our website. That’s a different software company, but we needed somebody who was able to figure all that out and integrate the software systems. Then, we also wanted a website that we could modify to some extent. WordPress allows us to do that. ImagineDesign set all that up so that there’s certain things we can modify on our website as often as we like.

We can also add things to the site like blogs and other newsletter type functions. That was our goal and ImagineDesign, far and away, surpassed our goal.

SOLUTION

Can you please describe the scope of their work in more detail?

A little bit of support was involved. There was a little training in the beginning on WordPress, but now the marketing department is very good with that. I was trained, and we had a recruiter who did some of the marketing and blogs for us, so she was trained, too. That’s about it from the training perspective. 

Whenever I have questions, when something comes up, I email them, and they’re extremely responsive. I’ve been very impressed. I’ve referred many potential clients to them.

Is WordPress the best platform for your organization in your opinion?

Very much so. It’s very easy to use, and very user friendly.

Could you please provide a sense of the size of that initiative with them? Just a general cost range or personnel work-hour figure?

I don’t know the work-hour figure. The cost was about $7,500 in the right range compared to other firms we vetted.

When was the work completed?

The initial phase was two years ago. We have already had some updates. For instance, we added a video last year. We’ve made some changes. We went through a transition a couple of months ago. There’s continuing work, but the initial work was done two years ago. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics you can share to demonstrate their success?

I don’t have any stats or metrics. I can say that we do get many compliments from both clients and candidates on our website. That’s always helpful. We listen for things like that. We have not had anybody who said they can’t figure it out, they don’t know where to go. So it’s laid out nicely, too, and very user friendly, which was important. 

What is unique or special about ImagineDesign that stands out compared to other IT firms?

They really listen to the client better than other firms. They do their research and ask the client questions. They put in the extra effort to understand our needs, and it helped the project be very successful. The quality of their work is very good also. The website has no problems and has gotten positive feedback.

Looking back on the project, is there anything that you think ImagineDesign could improve upon, or something that you would do differently?

No. There is nothing I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a hotel and conference center in Northern Virginia. We’ve got about 150 rooms, and we do meetings, weddings, special events, conferences, and also getaways. We have a great place to spend a nice weekend, enjoy the 1,200 acres that we’ve got in the beautiful surroundings.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the director of environmental programs and partnership developments, which is a position that’s kind of dual-focused. I do our green certifications because we are a sustainable conference center. I also do our partnership development, which is really a marketing function. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for the work with ImagineDesign?

We’ve done a couple of things with Imagine. One of the things is that we had do is manage our blog. We wanted to maintain a blog to increase our SEO online, and also to give us a venue to tell some longer stories than just the snippets that you can put up on Facebook or Twitter. We want it to be really well written and clever, but not also drain our staff time.

We work with them to update. We just send their team our baseline notes, and maybe some images of whatever we want them to write up, and they just go for it. They always do a bang-up job, never needing any edits from us. They’re able to capture what we’re trying to do with the blog, and what we’re trying to do with our business. They usually update every two to three weeks.

SOLUTION

Can you please describe their work in more detail?

We have a bid out with them right now for some consulting, but we haven’t done any big consulting projects with them as of yet.

Which platform do you use for the website and can you assess its performance?

We use WordPress. They have done some work for us on our WordPress and tech support. They gave us advice how to utilize a map function on the site. They advised us on how to capture information more easily from our guests. We’re moving to a new website platform as of March 1, 2014, so we will move away from the WordPress. WordPress has worked well for us so far.

Could you please provide a sense of the size of the initiative with them with a personnel work-hour figure?

It was, up until this month, probably 10 hours per month.

When will the work be completed?

We are wrapping up our work with them this month. We’ll still continue to use them for blog work. They have a bid with us now to do some consulting work. So, we’ll be considering that. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics you can share to demonstrate the success of the project?

I don’t at this time. I would say that the results in terms of how we feel about our blog are that it is engaging. It’s driving traffic from Facebook or Twitter where we might mention it back to our website, which is exactly what we want to happen.

When working with them, is anything unique or special about them that just stood out to you compared to other IT firms?

Their team really takes a lot of time to get to know you right off the bat, so I think that’s really different and special. They don’t jump right into the project, which I like. They do their research on the client before they walk in the door. They’ve done some groundwork, about our marketplace and where we fit in with our website and marketing efforts.

On the other side, looking back on the work they’ve done for you, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something you might do differently?

No. There are no issues that I can recall. We’ve been really happy.