Nopio

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Home Game Comic (http://www.homegamecomic.com), Lead creator

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Nopio?

Development of design and Wordpress template

What were your goals for this project?

To develop a Wordpress template, as well as some technical migration work from an older GoDaddy server

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Recommendation from a colleague

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

* Design work * Wordpress template creation * Technical and project management work

What was the team composition?

Project lead and developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The team was able to get the site design and up and running in no time at all. They were fast, efficient, and responsive. This was fantastic for me because I was trying to launch a net new project during the pandemic that was pandemic related. So the timing was critical.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Direct project management between me and the PM

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Speed and quality of work

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, I had a great experience. I'm continuing to use them for additional work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We started EveryPig because we saw an incredible opportunity to bring technology to pork producers while increasing transparency in the swine industry. I lead our design team.

We approach pork production problems with a customer experience mindset. As such, the needs of our end-users drive our product design. This method allows us to create easy-to-use software pork producers, field staff, and veterinarians will actually use. We love what we do, and I think you will too.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Nopio?

Nopio provided WordPress web development for us. We need a thoughtful development team that would care as much as we did about the quality of our site.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to build a responsive website on WordPress with deep Hubspot integrations. We needed a much more up-to-date website that gave us more flexibility to experiment with our marketing and sales funnels.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We sent out RFPs to several development houses including our in-house team. We considered six teams during the process. We chose Nopio due to their open and friendly quoting process and fixed-bid contracts.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We built a pixel perfect website mockup using UXPin which included all guidelines and specs. From there we developed a technical requirements document. It was very important to us that the development team provided a pixel-perfect site based on our mockups.

It was also very important that WordPress was implemented in such a way to make it easy to maintain. It wasn't enough that we had code dumped in blocks, we needed fully-flexible custom-built blocks in WordPress that would enable any nontechnical member of our team to make edits and maintain the website. Nopio also provided a great deal of technical consulting along the way.

What was the team composition?

Nopio provided four resources. An account manager, technical lead, and two senior-level front end developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We were shocked at how well the Nopio team did on our website both aesthetically and technically. The site looks great and their unique approach to WordPress means we have a really easy to maintain website.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The Nopio team uses Asana for project management. They hit all their deadlines and made sure we were in the loop at all points in the process. Their whole team speaks great English and as such communicating with them was a breeze.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Nopio is a customer-focused company which means they really care about their customers. Honestly, they felt like an extension of our in-house team and that's hard to find. Furthermore, they thought around corners for us, which meant we could put our trust in them that they'll find the best solutions without us having to constantly nag them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nope.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a product manager at Industrious. We are a co-working space with about 60 locations around the country.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Nopio?

A different vendor built our website on WordPress, but we didn’t have the internal engineering resources necessary to make changes to the site when we felt they were required. We engaged Nopio when we decided to make design and structure edits to our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Nopio managed the WordPress site for us end-to-end. They’ve been able to accommodate anything we request—whether that’s making sure our servers are running correctly or integrating our third-party services, such as the chatbot or geolocation module we have on our site. We launched a website redesign in early December 2018 and added new features and content.

What is the team composition?

We work with Piotr (CEO/Founder, Nopio) and one developer. We scale the developer’s hours up and down depending on the required hours to push new updates to the site. 

How did you come to work with Nopio?

I inherited this project from a colleague of mine who left our company a few months ago, so I am unsure of the initial selection process.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in April 2018 and remains ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Hiring an internal team is time consuming and sometimes unpredictable. The value Nopio offers is being able to step into a project with their knowledge and expertise and allow us to move more quickly.

We are extremely satisfied with the quality of their work. Nopio turns around projects quickly. They’ve helped us improve our infrastructure, and the frontend updates they’ve introduced have been practical as well.

How did Nopio perform from a project management standpoint?

Nopio is professional, knowledgeable, and flexible. For somebody in my position, I appreciate that. They are active participants in our morning video conference stand-ups and the management of our Jira board. When we have emergencies come up during what would be off hours for them in Poland, they are still responsive through Slack and emails if necessary.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been impressed by their end-to-end service—that’s what I value the most in our relationship. Some vendors may only be knowledgeable about WordPress but lack expertise in setting up servers. Nopio offers it all.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Whenever we need options for the best tool to accomplish a certain task, I wish Nopio had more ready-made opinions on the best solutions to save us time researching answers. Admittedly, that’s a little unfair to ask of them because we can’t expect them to anticipate what all of our needs will be.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d advise anyone starting to work with an augmented engineering team to come up with a clear workflow. It’s critical to set the expectations from the beginning as to when the developers are available and the means of communicating with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a creative producer a global PR and marketing firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Nopio?

We engaged Nopio for website redeisgn services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Nopio redesigned a website for one of our clients in the education industry, collaborating closely with our designer on the wireframes and then implementing the changes.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work directly with Piotr (CEO, Nopio), as well as Monika (Project Manager, Nopio).

How did you come to work with Nopio?

They were recommended to us by a colleague.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them since September 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We're completely confident in their ability to achieve our goals. Nopio has produced great work for our client that has received a lot of positive feedback.

How did Nopio perform from a project management standpoint?

They've been great to work with thus far, hitting all of our deadlines and working with a sense of urgency. Despite their distant location, we're able to reach them when we need to and track progress through Asana and Trello with relative ease.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Nopio's team works very quickly and thoroughly, producing flawless code that's easy for us to understand and maintain as needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be helpful to know the full team working on our project from the beginning, as well as their availability so we know what hours of the day we're able to reach them given the time difference.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend setting up a project management tool to track the progress in an organized, timely manner from the start. Their team is very flexible, so I'm confident they'd be able to accommodate the needs of any client.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am one of the co-founders of a hotel retreat center in Central America. As part of my role, I manage all marketing and branding.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Nopio?

We’re a relatively new resort, so we had an interim website in place. But as we’ve built it out, we’ve come across new needs, so we wanted to transfer to WordPress to take advantage of its features and add functionality. We wanted the website to tell our story and drive bookings and interest.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a third-party designer create the wireframes and the visual presentation, and Nopio followed those guides and helped implement them. We reused some content from the old site but not a lot of it. It’s primarily an informational website, complete with pictures, videos, and other content.

What is the team composition?

I worked with one of the Nopio founders and one main developer. Those were the two I interfaced with, but there might have been other members of their team.

How did you come to work with Nopio?

They were recommended to us by a colleague who had worked with them on a website.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in November 2017 and our site is nearing launch.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Nopio has implemented what we asked for, and we are very happy with the look of the website.

How did Nopio perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Trello and had it well organized in terms of the assets we gave them, the wireframe designs and whatnot. The one challenge with this project, and it’s not entirely their fault, was the difference of time zones. I’m in San Francisco, they’re in Poland, and some members of my team are in New York and Nicaragua, so everybody is on different schedules, and that makes it more challenging in terms of turning projects around quickly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re easy to work with, and they are a good resource for technical recommendations.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m unsure if they have a QA manager on staff, but they didn’t always solve everything that needed fixing. Some things would sometimes require one more round of work. They’re happy to go back and fix it, but that causes another delay. Those kinds of things can be avoided with more oversight.

Any advice for potential customers?

We found it useful to have weekly standups to review smaller items and discuss what’s being worked on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a member of the corporate marketing team at Erlang Solutions. Our software company provides consultancy services and products in the programming language called Erlang. We're based in different offices throughout Europe and the U.S. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Nopio?

We were looking for ongoing support from Ruby on Rails developers for our custom-built website. We often need fixes and improvements on quite short notice. The support and technical development of that platform were initially in-house, but we decided to engage with an agency. We had a list of tasks for Nopio to complete for our first project together.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Nopio has created and integrated several new features for our company's corporate website. It’s custom built in Ruby on Rails, so some things were hard coded. We requested specific features and functionalities that we can modify internally. Nopio implemented Google Tag Manager and made sure tall the tracking scripts on the website were clean and worked properly. This tool lets us now manage them ourselves.

Nopio added more flexibility to the CMS and integration with the marketing automation backend system. They added form editing and made changes to widgets. They also made it possible to have gated content on the site such as whitepapers users can download. They're mostly involved in technical development rather than design. In a few cases, their frontend developer has made minor changes.

What is the team composition? 

In the beginning, we mostly worked with the owner and founder, and Krzysztof (Rails Developer, Nopio) was our regular developer. As it progressed, they introduced another slightly more senior developer to the project. On a daily basis, we now mostly work with those two resources. They’re in close contact with our system administrator team. 

How did you come to work with Nopio?

We found Nopio while doing research online. We based our shortlist of agencies on skill sets, past projects, reviews of their experience, and client interviews. 

What made us decide to go with Nopio was their pleasant mode of personal contact. We liked that the founder was skilled and hands-on. He gets personally involved in projects. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in the summer of 2017, so it's been about a year now. Our partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since we’ve been working with Nopio, we have been able to improve the website and develop new features. Within the marketing team, having a much more flexible CMS makes work easier and faster. 

Nopio's efforts and deliverables have led to more results for the entire company. The changes they’ve made have also positively impacted all the PPC campaigns we're running. We’ve been generating more new leads, conversions, and enquiries. 

How did Nopio perform from a project management standpoint?

They're quite quick regarding time management and responding to our questions. In the beginning, the founder had several different roles. He was both project managing and technically involved. Being the founder, he's also engaged in different clients' projects. 

A few months ago, our regular developer was less available because he’d started a university course again. They quickly addressed this by ensuring we had support from another resource at this time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

This type of work can seem complicated to us as marketers because we can't code. If things are hardcoded, Nopio translates the actual work they’ve done in terms that are easy to understand They've made quite simple for us to work with the CMS modifications they’ve built.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Automating the overview and time process could help ensure we received it every week. Sometimes, both of us would forget to either send or request one. We ended up getting it on more of a bi-weekly or irregular basis. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to be in touch on a day to day basis and hold weekly meetings to discuss ongoing tasks. Make sure to have clear communication and briefings on the features that you'd like to have included. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is a non-profit which runs a yearly competition for young artists and writers between grades seventh through 12th. I no longer work for the company, but I was director of web and information technology when I was there.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Nopio?

When I arrived at the Alliance, we were facing rapid growth, and we had an unstable, buggy platform, hosted on physical servers which could not respond to the cyclical nature of our program. I worked closely with Nopio to migrate over to a scalable cloud-based system, and over the next five years we enhanced the underlying platform, designing and implementing custom-built solutions to address the growing needs of the organization and its constituents.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Nopio migrated us onto AWS [Amazon Web Services]. The tools we were using were EC2, elastic load balancing, S3, and Amazon RDS [Relational Database Service]. We also built digital archives which contained several thousand records. Our working relationship was very close. I oversaw the product on location and evaluated the need for updates. I had trust in Nopio’s ability to give constructive and objective feedback for different solutions. I presented the problem to Nopio, and then I would work with them to come up with solutions. Sometimes I would create wireframes and sometimes Nopio would. Sometimes we would build the solution incrementally based on the urgency.

How did you come to work with Nopio?

I started at Scholastic in January 2010, and Nopio had already been vetted before I was hired on.

How much have you invested with Nopio?

We spent between $100,000 and $150,000 per year with Nopio.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project is complete.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had 140,000 submissions the year we started, and by the time I left, we had more than 310,000. We grew by more than 100% while I was there. Once we migrated to a cloud-based platform which could accommodate the growth and cyclical nature, then we had close to zero downtime. Everyone was very satisfied with Nopio's work.

How did Nopio perform from a project management standpoint?

Nopio was very flexible and was able to adapt to whatever our project structure was. I worked with the account manager, he was always very aware of our cycles and our high urgency moments, and always made himself available when we needed him. With larger scope projects, we would set deadlines, and they were able to meet those. If a deadline was unrealistic, Nopio talked through it with us, and the same way was done with the budget. We also had some budget concerns and set a ceiling when we needed to scale back. Nopio was very good at communicating about where we were at with the budget.

What did you find most impressive about Nopio?

I appreciated Nopio's ability to pass on knowledge. As an offsite consulting entity, our fear was losing the programmer. Nopio was good at bringing a second person on to help and made sure there was no loss of knowledge. I notice they are expanding into different fields including designing, SEO [search engine optimization], etc. which is great.

Are there any areas Nopio could improve?

For our needs, the team at Nopio was just right.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the creative director of an agency that specializes in interactive installations. Our work is about creating interactive designs in the physical world, including moving sculptures, kinetic objects, and computer-controlled physical objects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Nopio?

At the time, we were doing a rebranding. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We did a visual rebranding and updated all of our marketing touchpoints, including the website. That is where Nopio came in. They helped us with the front-end development and backend CMS system WordPress, which is what we were using for our site. We did the design of the site and then worked with them on building the user interfaces on the backend and WordPress functionality.

How did you come to work with Nopio?

I don’t remember how we found out about them. Talking to their team, we could tell they were detail-oriented, thorough, and timely. Their costs were much lower in Poland than in New York City.

How much have you invested with Nopio?

We spent less than $10,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project March of 2016 and it was completed June of 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t have any specific numbers. In terms of being able to bring our designs to life and functional, it’s been very beneficial to have that online presence. The website is functional and responsive. They were able to give suggestions for any problem that came up.

How did Nopio perform from a project management standpoint?

The 1 point of contact I had was Peter, who was super responsive. We drove the process by providing the requirements and they responded to those requirements.

What did you find most impressive about Nopio?

If there was something that needed improvements, they weren’t afraid to talk to us about that.

Are there any areas Nopio could improve?

None. They were great to work with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The Underwear Expert is an underwear-of-the-month club. I am the chief executive officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Nopio?

We were trying to launch a custom apparel curation system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Nopio developed our platform from scratch using Ruby on Rails, Elastic Search, MySQL, and MongoDB. We had several industry-specific requirements for our underwear subscription program. We have worked with Nopio from business and technical strategy perspectives, explaining our challenges and technical requirements. Nopio used this information for developing a technical spec. 

How did you come to work with Nopio?

Nopio's owner had worked for another technology company which I hired a few years ago. We stayed in touch over time.

How much have you invested with Nopio?

The cost of Nopio's work was above $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing relationship. After our software platform was launched, Nopio has continued to improve and maintain it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our company wouldn't exist without the platform built by Nopio. It's a sophisticated and well-working solution, and we're constantly adding features to it. 

How did Nopio perform from a project management standpoint?

Nopio performs very well from this perspective. They're very organized and have met all of our timeline expectations.

What did you find most impressive about Nopio?

Nopio's team is very good at translating business strategy into technical strategy. We don't always know what we need, but we know what our business requirements are. Nopio can turn this into something more technical.

Are there any areas Nopio could improve?

No.

BACKGROUND

Please introduce your business and what you do there.

Ceros is an interactive content creation platform that empowers designers and marketers to create rich, engaging content, without any coding. I am the team’s Senior Digital Marketing Manager, overseeing our website, marketing campaigns and automation, as well as SEO [search engine optimization] and analytics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Nopio?

Our development team was busy building our product, so we were looking for a good resource to work on Ceros.com properties, developing new templates and one-off pages.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve run so many projects that they start to blend together. Initially, we requested a cleanup of our WordPress installation, which was hosted at the time on Pagely. Removal of inline CSS, unnecessary JavaScript, and code simplification were among the initial requests.

What was your process for selecting Nopio to work with?

Someone who had previously worked with Nopio referred us.

How much have you invested with Nopio?

At this point we have invested somewhat less than $10,000 working with Nopio. We have contracted about 80 hours of work so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We successfully completed our work with Nopio in November and December of last year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was done quickly and thoroughly.

What did you find most impressive about Nopio?

The people at Nopio are very strong communicators. In addition, they were willing to make recommendations on the project, as compared with other agencies that tend to do only what they are told.

Are there any areas Nopio could improve?

No, everything was pretty solid all around.