OSO Web Studio

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a full-service marketing and advertising agency.

What is your position?

I am an account manager for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with OSO Web Studio?

I was having a hard time with finding dependable programmers who could work on a few HTML issues. The work needed to be done right and not have to be adjusted when presenting it to a client.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

OSO Web Studio provided mostly HTML programming. They also helped us with consultation and search engine optimization work for our clients, as well as with other technology-related questions.

How did you come to work with OSO Web Studio?

I found them out of luck. After ending my collaboration with another programmer whom I'd been using for a short time, I was desperately looking for replacements online, within my area. OSO Web Studio gave me a sales call and it worked out from there.

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

The total cost for their services has been under $5,000. OSO Web Studio was the cheapest option which I came across, given the quality of work provided.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November of 2015. Our collaboration is ongoing. I send tasks to OSO Web Studio on a weekly basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Their owner is extremely understanding and helpful to me. The work provided by OSO Web Studio is perfect. I never need to make changes in terms of coding and our clients are happy. I am grateful that I found them.

What distinguishes OSO Web Studio from other providers?

They're very reliable.

Is there anything OSO Web Studio could have improved or done differently?

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're a promotional marketing firm. We run activations for larger marketing campaigns done for big brands. This includes social media campaigns, sweepstakes, contests and user-generated content for the NFL, MasterCard, Comcast and other large brands.

What is your position?

I am the Vice President and Group Lead for Technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with OSO Web Studio?

We have in-house development resources, but from time to time we get more work than we can handle. We have overflow which needs to be outsourced.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

OSO Web Studio handled both frontend and backend web development. They built responsive websites aimed at mobile, tablet, as well as desktop use. Their team is specialized in PHP, MySQL, HTML and JavaScript. We haven't used them for app development.

How did you come to work with OSO Web Studio?

They reached out to us at some point along the way. We evaluated their skillsets and felt that they fit our needs closely. We decided to use OSO Web Studio for a number of projects.

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

The total development cost has been between $10,000-50,000. Their pricing has been fairly reasonable.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them three or four years ago. All projects have been completed. Most of our work has been quick-turn, taking only a couple of weeks to develop and be brought to market. We don't have an ongoing, long-term development process, but the speed of delivery was an important factor in working with OSO Web Studio.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

They excel in terms of backend functionality. Frontend is something that their team has been getting better at, but it's not their strongest suite.

They are on par with our internal team and other external resources in terms of bugs and code quality.

What distinguishes OSO Web Studio from other providers?

They've been very flexible and responsive to client requests. We've made changes on-the-fly without issues.

Is there anything OSO Web Studio could have improved or done differently?

For some clients, especially the huge brands we've dealt with, fidelity to the approved creative material is very important. This has been an area in which they've improved, but it should remain a focus-point.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We run a mail order company which markets postage stamps to hobbyists and collectors throughout the US and Canada. We use the website as another way of communicating with customers and making orders. Most of our sales don't come through the online medium. With postage stamps, most shipments are made through the mail. They're part of the classic book-of-the-month format. Our job is to send customers the postage stamps in order for them to pick-and-choose what they want to add to their collection, but there are also clients who buy online or from our catalogue. It's a broad market and no two collectors collect in the same way. We strive to have a clean, simple, easy-to-navigate solution. The average age of our customers is over 45 years. They're among the more tech-savvy of their range, but they've still motivated us to make things simpler on the site.

What is your position?

I am the owner of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with OSO Web Studios?

We've had a website since the year 2000. We've since gone through several iterations of the site, as technology has improved, allowing us to do more for the customer. We adopted a Magento platform in 2012. The backend was very powerful and we received everything we wanted through it, but we weren't pleased with the way in which the design came out.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

OSO Web Studios picked up the work after the backbone had been put in place. Their role was mainly to make design tweaks and improvements.

How did you come to work with OSO Web Studios?

Sometimes serendipity is significant in the selection process. In 2011, I was looking for a company to redesign our site. At the time, there wasn't a resource available that would give a customer a list of what they needed. The field changes significantly in a 3-4 year period, from the last project, in terms of site architecture and how pages are generally put together. My specialization is selling stamps. I don't have technical knowledge about sites. This, coupled with the fact that most of our customers tend to be older and have particular requirements in terms of website design, gave us a challenge.

For me, the most important factor was getting a backend that would best serve our store, whether that was Magento, Drupal, or something else. We had to look at the functionality and determine how it pertained to us, but it was also a leap of faith. It's hard to find people who will listen and turn what we tell them into reality. OSO Web Studios has continued to make changes that have improved our user experience.

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

The total development cost has been in the range of $10,000-50,000. We received detailed billings and I consider that there was a good value to their price, especially compared to their predecessors, who billed us for every small change made. OSO Web Studios has given us pretty good estimates in terms of cost. Since I've been on both sides of the experience, I can say that they've been a pleasure to work with.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work is a constant evolution, especially in trying to see the direction that customers are taking and what we can do in order to expand the site. OSO Web Studios continues to work with us from month to month.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

OSO Web Studios offered a rare combination of tech know-how and design understanding. I told them more-or-less what I wanted the site to do, going back-and-forth with them on some design improvements.

The design improvements that their company made resulted in a 25% increase in our web sales, which was substantial. I worked well with both their design and technical people. They were responsive overall and offered quick solutions to our problems. I have no qualms with what they've done for us.

My biggest problem has been that it's rare to find a group of people that can offer both technical knowledge and the ability to create a functional design that doesn't require the user to go through hoops in order to get the job done. We wanted it to be simple and clean, especially for our age demographic. OSO Web Studios has been mindful of that and their answers to our problem didn't simply restrict to where a module could be placed. If we don't like a particular plug-in, for instance, OSO Web Studios will find a way around it. They will change the code, actually making it work for us.

How did OSO Web Studios perform from a project management standpoint?

I have a conference call with their team once a month and we discuss our direction. Whenever the site is down, we simply have to send them a text describing the problem. Usually, I will receive a response within 30 seconds, telling me they'll take care of it. We haven't seen this type of service from other places and I don't think we're an exceptional account for OSO Web Studios.

What distinguishes OSO Web Studios from other providers?

Everything goes back to their combination of technical know-how and their ability to provide a functional, user-friendly design. The world is full of bad and convoluted websites. Having a sales increase meant that their solution worked for us. I don't know if the same approach would work for everyone, but OSO Web Studios is very creative in solving problems for almost any client.

Is there anything OSO Web Studios could have improved or done differently?

Even though we've been quite demanding, OSO Web Studios has been responsive to our needs. They wanted us to be happy.