Viaduct

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CMO of the biggest Ukrainian fashion brand. We are quite famous in the world and sell our clothes in more than 30 countries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Viaduct, and what were your goals?

We had the same problem with our first e-commerce website, which was created by one developer and couldn't stand up to criticism. We turned to Viaduct to develop a e-commerce from scratch. We needed to get a site on Wordpress using WooCommerce that had the potential to scale with plugins as the business grew.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

On the advice of acquaintances. VIaduct have already worked on the online stores of some Ukrainian brands, so we decided it was a reliable vendor.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The process of working with the guys is very simple. We had no unnecessary meetings and no bureaucracy that is usual for development companies. After the site development was completed, we received a flexible offer to support the site, which continues to this day.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

A project manager, couple of developers, Q&A. Small team, big result.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

It's hard to remember the exact results after the launch, since we have been working together for a very long time. Our site load time has decreased significantly, our operations department needed less time to process an order, because the admin panel has become more functional and user-friendly. We have refactored several times over these few years, so the site's health indicators are always quite high.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We tried many different approaches with daily calls, sprints, and different frameworks, but settled on a simple process where we get a progress report every day. Plus, we have direct contact with developers, which makes the job a lot easier for our managers. I give credit to Viaduct. We really appreciate their flexibility and willingness to adapt so the client is comfortable.

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

This is a small company with a lot of experience. Usually in large companies developers are allocated to projects based on availability at the moment and often do not have relevant experience. At Viaduct, we got developers with great and unique experience, which we needed. In addition, we can always talk to the funder about any questions and get help.

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

We have been working together for quite a long time, so we have managed to catch all our mistakes and correct them promptly. At the moment we are satisfied with everything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an education company that services teachers in the US. We provide them with professional learning opportunities in digital lesson planning, design, creation, and implementation.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Viaduct?

We needed help with website development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired Viaduct to build a brand new website. It was a refresh from our previous website, but we added several key components to generate revenue, including an e-commerce feature and a credit card processing integration. Also, they helped set up all the accounts we needed in different spaces and integrated the website with other services, like our CRM.

They built the website from the ground up. The team gave us a backend system for an admin panel, so we’d have our own CMS. We can interface with it to edit the frontend website. They developed both customizations using Asgard for the backend and Laravel for the frontend. Additionally, they used WrapKit, a UI bootstrap, so we’d be able to browse a catalog of UI interfaces, select one, and plug it easily.

Viaduct continues to do general maintenance for us, and we also contract them to do big projects. Right now, we’re redoing some of the e-commerce stuff, and they’re working full-time. We use a Droplet server through DigitalOcean, so Viaduct doesn’t manage the site’s server. However, they manage our cloud server.

What is the team composition?

They have 12 people at the company, and four work with us. We have a dedicated project manager, and they delegate tasks to the developers on the team.

How did you come to work with Viaduct?

We saw them on a platform similar to Clutch,

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked with them for almost four years. We started our engagement in January 2018, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s been great. We have 75,000 users on the website and 40,000 on our CRM. The whole website is bootstrapped, so it’s very efficient. Viaduct has built us a professional website with functionality, custom integrations, and easy admin access for a really affordable price.

The CRM allows us to create a tool that lets us change the site how we want, so we don’t have to contract them every time. We paid a little more the first time, but we’ve saved a ton of money in the long run. In general, they always exceed our expectations and work efficiently. They’re a great team to work with; we’re 100% satisfied.

How did Viaduct perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been excellent. They’ve stuck to the schedule and budget on all the projects. When they don’t, they still make up the work. It’s been phenomenal.

When we first launched, they did video calls to walk us through the features and how to use them. If we had any questions, they’d send us back screen recordings describing how to do what we needed. They were very helpful with that.

We have daily access via a Slack channel. Also, we have monthly calls on Zoom, and they’ve provided both tools.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re efficient coders, and the team gives us exactly what we ask for. In our experience, we can go in, explain how we want things, and they get it done on time and within budget.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think they have someone for UX/UI or someone that could help us with marketing. They could improve if they added more services, but they already have everything we want and more.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Get on a call with them. Write down your ideas so you can explain what you want; they’ll tell you how much it’ll cost and whether it’s feasible.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a founding partner and Strategy Director at Humanfolk— a branding and design agency in Toronto, Canada we specialize is in creating tools to affect business growth and operations acceleration.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Viaduct, and what were your goals?

Our client has an old website created in WIX and was looking to expand the capabilities and opportunities to generate revenue from the website. We already had a rough design and hired Viaduct to help refine the site and develop the final website for launch. Our goals were to:

• Transition our client from WIX to a more robust CMS system that could handle scale and content monetization better than WIX.
• We wanted to prioritize load times and site performance due to the amount of traffic and logged in users.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We have worked with alot of vendors through Upwork and with other developers in the past and we have always had less than ideal experiences with developers we have hired. Viaduct connected to our job posting on Upwork and were not only prompt with their responses but kept us accountable too. Aliaksei, Sergey and Andrey at Viaduct are top notch and listened to everything we had to say and talked through our project with us offering up ideas and possible solutions to our situation in the first call. We selected Viaduct purely because of their professionalism and their leadership.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We discussed the goals and logistics of the project and they outlined a plan for us and set us up with a Jira board so we could stay informed with every aspect of the project. They were tasked with translating our Figma wireframe into a functional website.

• Viaduct facilitated the user journeys with us and lead the team on the functionality of the site. The full sit was planned out and Viaduct really helped us with the planning of the site
• Create a new website using Wordpress and transition the entire content from the old site to the new Wordpress site. - Increase blog functionality and content alignments
• Add the ability to serve ads on the website - Build a custom Recipe Card module that users could rate recipes and use the recipe card as a shopping list
• Build a custom Recipe Box module to allow users to save/print/share recipes from the blog posts
• And connect the website to Youtube's API to aggregated the client's content on the homepage of the website
• The set up of the WPEngine server environment and deployment of the website to users was entirely handled by Viaduct and as smooth as butter.

Tech used

• Wordpress
• React
• Stock and Custom plugins

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with 3 main people at Viaduct.

• Aliaksei - PM and point of contact, Aliaksei took my calls when I needed to chat and he was always an incredible help at keeping everything moving forward.
• Sergey - Lead Developer/Engineer - Sergey is excellent at explaining solutions and talking through possible solutions. He explains everything clearly and without using a ton of jargon.
• Andrey - Developer - Andrey built the site and developed the interface with us, his attention to design details is incredible and not often seen in developers we have worked with in the past. Andrey was excellent.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The site launched without a hitch. User were very happy and the traffic to the site increased 20-30% within the first month due to the ease of use. The subscribed users went from 248 on the WIX to over 3000 subscribed users. The client found a new love for creating blog content now that they had a website that made their blog look and function perfectly for the end user.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Viaduct's project management and communication is excellent and beyond expectations. I felt bad because I was all over the place and dealing with alot during this project and Aliaksei and the team kept me accountable and managed me as well, it was perfect. Their patience and commitment to excellence really shines through when you work with the Viaduct team.

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

Viaduct is not just a service provider they are a true partner. They walk right beside you every step of the way and make sure that you are informed and you know what you need to get done for them. They worked with us not just for us and we love that in our collaborators.

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

Everything with the project was great on their end, I was definitely ill prepared at times and they were always very understanding. I think perhaps they could be more direct with impacts to the project. I always like when people are straight up and they always were and they can get more firm at time and it would have probably lit a fire under my butt to get things moving. All in all they were great and they don't have to be super nice all the time lol.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of a design innovation firm. One of the projects I’m working on is a platform for podcast research.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Viaduct?

I hired Viaduct to develop my podcast research platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Viaduct was involved in the very early stages of our project before we even had a product. I came to them with some ideas for MVPs that I wanted to launch, and they helped me work through my ambiguous designs to figure out a product that we could bring to market.

They recommended building my research platform in WordPress, putting together a subscription model and payment functionality to go with it. There were some difficult technical challenges around uploading .mp3 files to request research reports, but they worked through that in testing.

What is the team composition? 

Alex (Project Manager) was fantastic. Any time I had questions he was available to jump on a call. 

How did you come to work with Viaduct?

I’d worked with them several years ago on a different project at another company, so they were at the top of my mind when I started my company.

How much have you invested with them?

I spent $3,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

This most recent project lasted from July–September 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Viaduct exceeded my personal expectations. Their designs are beautiful, and the platform is reliable — it’s potentially ready to go to market. I won’t know until the new quarter, but, hopefully, it will have a big impact on my revenue.

How did Viaduct perform from a project management standpoint?

I had access to a Jira board, which kept each stage of the project transparent, and there were regularly scheduled check-ins. We also chatted on Zoom and through phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed with their ability to take on my ambiguous design problems. It was a nice balance of quickly executing the design elements that we knew would work and questioning the assumptions we had on elements that were uncertain.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I wouldn’t change anything. It was really a great experience.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t be afraid to go to them with open-ended questions. They’re great at navigating those uncertainties.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a Norwegian bike register. End users register their bikes with us in order to save on insurance fees. We’ve been in business for more than 25 years, and we started a more modern system a couple of years ago. I’m the owner and CEO of the business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Viaduct?

We needed to develop our system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Viaduct developed our bike register for WordPress, with custom PHP. The site uses the WooCommerce Subscriptions and Stripe plug-ins, along with some more technical ones.

Users must first pay for a yearly subscription, after which they can enter all the necessary information for their bikes and save them in the system. The bike registry system needs to comply with the rules of the Norwegian insurance system. For example, the police and insurance entities have their own users on the system, and a user can change the owner of a bike or change its status to scrapped or stolen. Users have to be registered with names, addresses, emails, and phones. Credit card information is saved for recurring payments.

What is the team composition?

The senior developer on the team is my main point of contact. There’ve been a couple of other developers involved over the years, but most of the work has been done by the senior dev. I’m also in contact with the owner of the company.

How did you come to work with Viaduct?

We reviewed different possibilities on Upwork. We had email conversations and Skype calls with Viaduct, and we chose them because they could build the system in WordPress WooCommerce, which was our plan, and because they gave us the best impression. We ended up hiring them on an hourly rate, and we’ve been using them since then.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is $80,000–$90,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I first got in contact with them in June 2017, and they started development in July, and we had the system certified by the Norwegian Insurance Organization in December of that year. We launched in January 2018, and we’ve been working with Viaduct continuously since then. We develop new features, fix things, and update plug-ins on a monthly basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’ve been quite happy about working with Viaduct. The main developer has been along all the way, and he knows the system. I also got quite a fair price compared to what it would’ve cost in Denmark or Norway.

I’m a finance person, and I don’t have a background in development, but I’m happy with how the system is working. I know how it needs to work, so I’ve done all the testing myself. There have been some bugs, but they were fixed as we found them.

How did Viaduct perform from a project management standpoint?

I wouldn’t have expected the project to reach $90,000 when I started the project, but I find the cost to be quite reasonable. We added a lot of things that I didn’t think of at first. We’ve always worked with Viaduct on an hourly rate.

The communication could be better at times, but it’s okay. I’ve always been in contact with them on Skype, and they usually answer my messages within the same day. I might not get a quick answer when they’re busy, but I pay an hourly rate, so I can’t expect them to jump out all the time. From this point of view, I’m also quite happy about the communication.

We use Jira for project management. I assign them new tasks and communicate with them using it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

My background is in finance, and I haven’t worked with other developers. Relative to what I’m paying, I find that Viaduct is doing a reasonable job. We’ve got a fine system working now, and Viaduct delivered it for a reasonable price and time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t get answers as fast as I’d like to sometimes.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I find our way of working together to be quite okay. Viaduct could maybe use something like Slack in order to be more involved. We’re working with just one developer now, so Skype is okay.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I'm an executive at Hibernating Cubs

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

iOS app development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• To code the designed iOS app

SOLUTION

How did you find Viaduct?

Online Search

Why did you select Viaduct over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Company values aligned

What was the size of Viaduct’s team?

1 Employee

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

The app is designed. And Viaduct was hired to turn the design into reality. It was a productivity app, and even though the only server to work with is Apple's iCloud, it still required some complex logic and an intuitive, smooth, and animated interface.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• The project was divided into stages, and results were examined for each stage.

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

They mostly delivered items on time, and when it was not possible, the progress was reported, reasons were explained, and a new estimation was given.

What was your primary form of communication with Viaduct?

Virtual Meeting

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

I think they are quite trustworthy. The team member assigned to me never used his paid time for something else. And when he encountered technical difficulties, he would even use his own time to think about the solutions. I think that is the most valuable attribute because they actually care about my project.

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

We have been working together for quite a long time, so we have managed to improve our communication along the way. At the moment we are satisfied with everything.