SmartSites

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the publications manager at Gimme Credit Publications. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartSites?

We needed to build a new marketing website and actually launch a whole new marketing campaign. Our old website was outdated. We had been primarily used it for research purposes. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Once I came on board to lead the project, I provided an overview of the exact steps for each stage of our development from concept to launch. SmartSites built our new site on WordPress. After we laid out the essential things we needed to reach our target audience, the team described what they thought would be the best fit for our requirements. 

As we worked on the marketing campaign, we held numerous phone conversations with the director of project management. She went over the services, websites, and marketing tools SmartSites had to offer. We specifically requested a template to send out to our research investment advisors. 

What is the team composition? 

We worked directly with Anita (Director of Project Management, SmartSites). 

How did you come to work with SmartSites?

Our CEO originally reached out to SmartSites. I'm not sure how he chose them. He might have found them through a referral or Google search. Once they discussed pricing and strategy and he decided to hire them, I joined the engagement.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we've spent about $10,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2018 and have an ongoing contract. The site launched in June 2018. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since we launched the new website, we've had a dramatic increase in sales and user traffic. The marketing campaigns have helped us identify additional marketing trends and possible contacts, as well. 

How did SmartSites perform from a project management standpoint?

SmartSites managed the project superbly. They’ve absolutely met or exceeded all of our expectations. In the beginning, we communicated several times a week. As the project progressed, we didn't need to speak as often. I still reach out with questions and for additional insight. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was most impressed by SmartSites' availability. Anita is very hands on and always makes herself accessible when we have questions or concerns. Whenever we need to hop on a call, she schedules a meeting to go over suggestions and recommendations. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there are not.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would definitely recommend SmartSites. Even though the hiring decision had already been made when I first joined the project, I personally researched the websites and products they'd built for past clients. Anyone who is interested in developing a new website or launching a marketing campaign should utilize SmartSites. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Robert's & Son is a wholesale retail supplier of electrical parts for industrial vehicles and equipment. We specialize in starters, alternators, motors, and vehicle safety lighting. I'm the primary product manager and purchasing agent. My responsibilities also include website administration and development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SmartSites?

We hired them to maintain our website infrastructure and functionality and perform some SEO.

What were your goals for this project?

Our biggest challenge is showcasing the depth of our inventory. We have not only a starter for your backhoe, but also a battery for your grocery-getter and all the tools to properly test and install those parts. Our goals were simply to improve our website and to enhance customer knowledge of our deep inventory. We felt this formula would improve sales.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We wanted a local vendor. In an industry where you may never put a face to a partner, it's better to do things the old-fashioned way. We wanted to sit with them and discuss our project.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

Our website was already live, but we'd gone as far as we could with our past developer. We were happy with the customer functionality, but needed more backend flexibility for content input, brand logo placement, and product display. After an almost catastrophic hack, we also migrated our hosting services to SmartSites from one of the big box vendors. 

What was the team composition?

Our project manager is the first person to get a frantic e-mail from me when something goes wrong. She manages the specialists behind the scenes, who always get the job done despite my layman's terminology. Other teams seamlessly guided us through the server migration.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SmartSites quickly gave us the tools to display as many brand logos and products as we wished. Our customers always know which products are available, and our customer service team has immediate access to the descriptions and pricing of over 12,000 SKUs.

Switching hosts was our best move.  Our web presence now reaches more markets in the U.S. and abroad. Its speed and reliability, on both desktop and mobile, has vastly improved. I can relax knowing that we have such a reliable web maintenance and hosting service.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Their project management is effective. On their active collaboration portal, we track our progress, see who is working on our project, and chime in when needed.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I'm impressed by their availability, accountability, and professionalism. They obviously take pride in their work, and it shows in their product. They aren't faceless cyborgs reading from a customer service script or flowchart. They patiently guide us through issues, understanding that we may not understand how things work.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

They could send messages about new products, services, or technologies that I would find useful.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the vice president of Long Island Carpet Cleaners.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartSites?

We were looking for someone to provide strategy and budgeting advice for Google AdWords. Our account was originally overseen in-house when I took over managing it, but it wasn't being handled effectively and we wanted to hire someone new. After our first third-party consultant got pulled away from us, we researched other options and found the SmartSites team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We're trying to come up with different strategies to tweak our AdWords presence and maximize every dollar that we're spending, and they’ve also helped us with our SEO. It's been challenging, not because of SmartSites, but just because it's a competitive market.

What is the team dynamic?

They assigned a project manager who they thought would work well with us, and that's who we deal with directly, though they have other team members who occasionally assist.

How did you come to work with SmartSites?

My wife has a decade of agency experience and is familiar with the digital side, so I enlisted her to do some research. She found that they were one of several Google-trusted vendors in our area, so I interviewed those companies and came away feeling the most comfortable with the SmartSites team.

I really liked that they were humble about their expertise and were willing to bring in additional personnel to handle SEO, for example, instead of having the AdWords person try to manage it. That wasn't the model I saw at some of the other organizations we interviewed. We're a small business, so we needed reliable customer service with a hands-on approach, but a large organization was beyond our price range, and many of the small "one-stop shops" came across as disingenuous about their capabilities. SmartSites struck a good balance of expertise and drawing upon different resources to meet our needs.

How much have you invested with them?

Their services cost us about $500 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in October 2016 and they're still working with us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The biggest benefit to me has been an unexpected one because we use the AdWords Click-to-Call feature, which automatically records any calls we get. I've been able to do a huge amount of business training with my staff as a result of that and it's impacted our ROI when we close sales. The ability to monitor calls daily instead of monthly helped me manage my team better and we've seen a huge impact.

Related to that, we've seen an increase in conversion rates and referral traffic. We're also getting more targeted calls. There are fewer, but the quality of them is better, which is more cost-effective for me because my staff isn't wasting their time fielding unnecessary calls.

My sales have also been improving, and we're moving in the right direction, but the results currently aren't as high as I'd like to see.

How did SmartSites perform from a project management standpoint?

We spoke much more often in the first few months, but once things were up and running we communicated a bit less. Now that we're approaching my slow season, I can spend a lot more time tweaking things and working with them to revamp our strategy so we're ready to go when we up our spending for our busy season.

I'm in touch with them probably every other week right now, and we mostly communicate via email. They do well enough, but I think they're spread a little thin at the moment. I don't know that I'm necessarily getting the full amount of attention that I'd prefer at this point.

As far as deadlines, they’re pretty good. I gave them one big, challenging request several weeks ago that I’m still waiting on, but I knew that might be difficult given their limited resources and my limited budget as a client.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I went to a conference that they hosted a few weeks ago, and I was really impressed by some of the projects that they've implemented for some of their other clients. They had one particular client with a similar business model to ours, and they did an amazing job at getting them off the ground. Now, their budget is 10 times larger than ours, so I understand why they allocated so many more resources to it, but I was very impressed with their ability to mobilize and solve this client's problem so quickly.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

Like many businesses, they're going to be more responsive to a large project than a much smaller one, so if you're only spending a few hundred dollars a month it might be challenging.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner/president/CEO of South Florida Distillers, a craft rum distillery that also contracts liquor manufacturing for private brands. I’m also the proprietor, so I sign all the tax documents for the business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartSites?

We initially needed to drive attention to our website and let people know that we are physically in our area. It wasn’t so much about data gathering in the beginning, but about local awareness. We needed to associate our name with local restaurants using SEO. 

The website needs an exact purpose, and I had an idea of what I wanted to achieve. I had a narrow-minded goal for the website at the beginning because of the laws our industry has to abide by.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Matt Prepis [Project Manager, SmartSites] talked with us about our goals and theme, which was nautical. I found websites I liked and showed those to them to initiate design, and then there was a collaborative effort between Matt and I. Afterwards, he had developers and graphic designers put together three samples which I selected from, and then they started development.

They obtained rights for images on a website I chose that made sense for our company, and then uploaded everything, including the content we wrote, onto the WordPress site. It took 6-8 weeks to develop.

They also associated the brand name of our rum, FWAYGO, with liquor so that when you search on Google, we come up. I’m now starting to add information to the site for contract manufacturing, and SmartSites continues to implement other things, like downloading pictures.

Were there certain features you asked for?

On the left side of WordPress, they made a cocktail section that allows me to load in simple recipes. They made it very easy to input this information, and created pop-ups on a certain page which has been very helpful for SEO. When you type in our name, you get cocktail pictures on our website, and then people want to see what they can make with our product.

What is the team dynamic?

I’m not sure, because I wasn’t in direct communication with the developers or graphic designers.

How did you come to work with SmartSites?

I called one of the guys from SmartSites who I met in college and asked him to do the website. I didn’t contact many people because I just didn’t have time. I do have a local friend who makes websites, but I always thought SmartSites’ were better.

I like and trust SmartSites, and they had built a website for a business I sold. The current website took the same amount of time as that one, and they delivered on my expectations, so I stuck with them.

How much have you invested with them?

I spent between $12,000-$13,00 total. I already had hosting for them, but that got the WordPress site live.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in May or June 2014, and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have 3,500 unique visitors per month, and every time someone visits, we ask how they found us, and it’s always because of the website. I don’t advertise at all other than on social media, and we don’t do sales through the website. Yet, we still have a lot of traffic and it’s performed well in terms of SEO. SmartSites delivers in an appropriate amount of time, and when they spec it, it doesn’t change design paradigms before they’re finished.

There’s only one company that ranks higher than us due to keyword phrases because they had the first license in the state, and they’re old. There are 30 distilleries in Florida, but because our name is South Florida Distillers, it helps with SEO. The rest of the success is because of the website.

Having people visit the website is important to me because we operate a production facility, and I don’t have a tasting room yet. However, people from all over the country still visit us, take tours of the facility, and purchase our products to take back to someone who loves our rum. Between Facebook and our website, our visitors know all about us.

How did SmartSites perform from a project management standpoint?

A lot of the work was done through a bug/development tracking system. My point of contact was Matt and he took care of everything. We communicated via Skype and it was easy to have constant communication. The first several weeks, I talked to him every day. After that, they were working on getting it done, and then, towards the end, we were refining the site and making changes.

They did a great job, and I would use them for my next website. You should always have someone else do your website for you, especially if you’re not familiar with the business, because you’ll miss out on factors important to SEO. I haven’t used anyone else besides SmartSites because they’ve done well by me every time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their speed is a huge plus. Right now, they’re supplying content, including images and articles, and they’re always open to feedback while maintaining a quick turnaround.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

Knowing more of the team would be useful and make you feel more committed, because their team is big from what I understand.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Business Consultant of Montessori School of Pearland LP

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a construction company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SmartSites to accomplish?

• We hired SmartSites to help with digital marketing, improve our online visibility, and generate leads for our Montessori school project.

SOLUTION

How did you find SmartSites?

Online Search

Why did you select SmartSites over others?

• High ratings
• Good value for cost

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The scope of work included managing our digital marketing strategy, improving our online presence, and helping generate leads. The SmartSites team worked on website optimization, online advertising, and marketing campaigns to help attract potential customers. They also provided ongoing support, communication, and performance updates throughout the process.
 
 
 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The project helped improve our online visibility and marketing efforts. We started seeing increased website traffic, better engagement from potential customers, and more inquiries about our services. Overall, the work done by the SmartSites team helped move us closer to our lead generation and marketing goals.
 

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The project management was very organized and professional. The SmartSites team communicated clearly, delivered items on time, and was always responsive to our questions and requests. They were easy to work with and addressed our needs quickly throughout the project.

What was your primary form of communication with SmartSites?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What impressed us most about SmartSites was their responsiveness and professionalism. Their team was very easy to communicate with, understood our requirements well, and was always willing to help and provide guidance whenever needed.

Are there any areas for improvement or something SmartSites could have done differently?

Overall, we had a very positive experience working with SmartSites. At this stage, we did not see any major areas for improvement, as their team was responsive, professional, and supportive throughout the project.
 
 
 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Owner of Bourbon Barrel Cottages and Tours

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Bourbon Barrel Cottages, a Ky Bourbon Trail focused resort and tour company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SmartSites to accomplish?

• More traffic

SOLUTION

How did you find SmartSites?

Online Search

Why did you select SmartSites over others?

High ratings

How many teammates from SmartSites were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Chris takes care of our online presence. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Chris at Smart Sites is amazing! My business has grown already.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Really enjoying working with him.

What was your primary form of communication with SmartSites?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Thanks Chris!

Are there any areas for improvement or something SmartSites could have done differently?

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Owner of Southern Concrete and Epoxy

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We specialize in concrete coatings for commercial and residential projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SmartSites to accomplish?

• Lead generation
• Website update
• Good communication

SOLUTION

How did you find SmartSites?

Online Search

Why did you select SmartSites over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location

How many teammates from SmartSites were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We specialize in concrete coatings for commercial and residential projects 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The constant communication and updates was key for our business.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Yes, they delivered on time and ahead of schedule and had constant communication with me throughout the process.

What was your primary form of communication with SmartSites?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their communication.

Are there any areas for improvement or something SmartSites could have done differently?

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Owner of a furniture design company. 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Furniture designer

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SmartSites to accomplish?

• Increase sales

SOLUTION

How did you find SmartSites?

Online Search

Why did you select SmartSites over others?

High ratings

How many teammates from SmartSites were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Increase leads through PPC and CTA

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Increase in sales

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Responded to emails promptly 

What was your primary form of communication with SmartSites?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They fixed issues as they arose.

Are there any areas for improvement or something SmartSites could have done differently?

Na

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Operations Director of Certified AutoBrokers

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Used Car Dealership

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SmartSites to accomplish?

• Google & microsoft Ads dominance

SOLUTION

How did you find SmartSites?

Referral

Why did you select SmartSites over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from SmartSites were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Google / Microsoft ads full acount set up and strategy roll out

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

SmartSites has consistently increased Google/Microsoft's effectiveness and efficiency month-over-month.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Delviered on time, around the clock support with routine strategy meetings and reporting dashboard review

What was your primary form of communication with SmartSites?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Ben is the man, my account rep

Are there any areas for improvement or something SmartSites could have done differently?

Clearler communication of timelines on set up

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of an e-commerce company. We sell makeup mirrors, large bathroom mirrors, and bathroom accessories.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartSites?

We needed SEO services to bring more organic traffic to our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SmartSites provided SEO services, including site revisions, backlinks, and blog posts. The team worked on updating content, improving site speed, and making design changes.

What is the team composition?

We worked with one teammate from SmartSites.

How did you come to work with SmartSites?

We found them through an online search. We chose them over other options because they had high ratings.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2024–December 2025.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our website traffic tripled in one year after we started working with SmartSites.

How did SmartSites perform from a project management standpoint?

SmartSites usually delivered on time. We communicated through virtual meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

SmartSites had an SEO management system with specific requirements to be met for each change.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have worked a little faster.