XWP

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a media platform focused on the business and political news of the space industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with XWP?

We wanted to refresh our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XWP helped us rebuild our existing WordPress website — they did a total upgrade of our platform. To jumpstart the process, they did a lot of prework by looking at the site to capture relevant information on it.

What was the team composition? 

We worked with around seven members of XWP’s team, including their sales director, a senior product owner, front- and backend engineers, a project manager, and a user-acceptance testing specialist.

How did you come to work with XWP?

After an exhaustive search, we found XWP and other potential providers online, but we went with XWP because they seemed like the best option.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $130,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2022–March 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our site’s load time, visits, and ad impressions improved thanks to XWP’s work.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

XWP met our deadlines and stayed within budget. Regarding tools and communication, we used Slack, Jira, and a ticketing system. They were very responsive to our inquiries.

What did you find most impressive about them?

XWP was a personable team, making it very comfortable to work with them. In addition, they were committed to addressing our needs and delivering good results.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I didn’t think there was anything they could improve on because they delivered as expected, and I don’t have a negative comment about their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open to listening to their suggestions and be direct with your needs. As long as you’re willing to cooperate, you’ll have a great partnership.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a writer at an ed tech startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We moved our blog from a headless CMS to WordPress and hired 4 new writers to scale content. There was no style or theming to it. It was using the "most recent post" view and you couldn't even search it! We wanted to scale our content quickly and build reader trust, but our internal devs don't have enough bandwidth to help us with that. We hired XWP to help us create a professional looking blog to scale and increase traffic.

SOLUTION

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

One of our team members had heard good things about XWP from someone she worked with. We talked to a few companies. Only XWP seemed to really understand what we were trying to do and had the right resources to help us accomplish our goals. They were also very flexible and worked the contract around our business needs.

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

We had a list of features we wanted to see as well as concepts of what the blog home page, category pages, and individual posts should look like. Our developer understood what we were after and wireframed concepts for us. He was very good about incorporating our feedback and answering our technical (and not so technical) questions. Within a few months we rolled out major updates to the blog that take it to another level.

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

Initially 2, our developer and a project manager. After a few weeks we brought on a third person from XWP to conduct the code review we did not have time for.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

From the time we started working with XWP (October) through the end of January, our traffic went up from approximately 39.2K sessions per month to about 131K sessions per month.

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

Once we established a rhythm and a schedule, deployments roll out regularly. Our dev is very responsive on Slack and Jira and is there when things don't go as planned.

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

It sounds corny, but everything. XWP fills the WordPress gap we have on our development team. The company has done such a phenomenal job we extended our initial 3-month engagement to a full year.

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

At our initial meeting, we thought we'd have a chance to lay out our strategy and vision and talk about what our priorities were. It really didn't go that way, though, and we had to course correct. There was also a bit of a miscommunication early on with a feature we deployed. XWP was quick to respond to our concerns and correct the issue, and we haven't had any problems since.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the VP of technology at Penske Media Corporation (PMC). PMC owns and operates a number of brands in entertainment, fashion, luxury, and events.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We needed a company that could help us improve our Core Web Vitals across a number of our websites.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired XWP to help us optimize and improve the speed and performance of our sites’ existing features without making any material or detrimental changes to the user experience. The technologies they use include PHP and JavaScipt. 

They did an in-depth audit of one of our websites, billboard.com, and came up with a list of recommended changes to improve its overall Core Web Vitals scores. They gave us a great detailed breakdown of the things that contributed to the rankings at the time and what their planned approach was for addressing those. They also touched on the technologies that spanned across all of our websites to improve some of our shared code.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with 5–6 people from XWP, including a project manager and a web performance expert.

How did you come to work with XWP?

We've worked with XWP and their sister company on a number of other projects over the last six years. We initially found them because we closed our websites on WordPress VIP, and they are a WordPress VIP-approved development partner. We reached out to them initially on those grounds and vetted them along with a handful of other companies, and they ended up winning the bid for that particular project. We were pleased with the overall outcome and value we got from them, so we've continued working on them on several other projects over the years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2016, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The main goal of this particular project is to improve our sites’ Core Web Vitals scoring, which is a way of measuring the speed and performance of a website put together by Google. In this particular case, we had pretty hard metrics as far as what our current and target scores were.

XWP has actually done a great job of improving our scores, and in places where they haven’t been able to improve the scores to the degree that we would have liked, they’ve been able to provide satisfactory reasons and guidance as far as further development and analysis that our team could do ourselves to get us closer to those scores.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

XWP has performed well in terms of project management. They’re able to stay on track, provide regular updates, and work within our budget. They’ve definitely given us everything that we were looking for in terms of the deliverables.

We use GitHub for our code and JIRA to manage our work. We typically communicate through Slack, tickets, and video calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

XWP has a lot of strengths in web performance, which was one of the reasons why we specifically worked with them on this project. In general, we find their work to be of good quality, and they are good at meeting timelines and deliverables and staying within budget. I’m also impressed with their excellent communication.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have your objective in mind. Make sure to clearly tell XWP what outcome you want to achieve and what constraints you have for your project. As long as XWP knows the parameters, they'll be able to come up with good solutions that would get you closer to your objectives and fit within whatever parameters that you outline.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I lead a developer relations team at Google, specifically in the area of search products. We work on things related to the interface between Google and the third-party ecosystem, open web, and so on.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We were focused on developing products for the web ecosystem. Particularly, we were trying to create some plug-ins for WordPress. We needed a partner to work with a couple of the technologies for the development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XWP has worked on web development in general. We initially hired them to extend our capabilities. They work with us as part of our engineering team, working together towards deliverables.

The plug-ins were built for WordPress but also required some JavaScript and web technologies. We worked with AMP, a web components library. In the same project, the plug-in required a site, so we created a website with them.

Additionally, they’ve done some design work and content creation, helping us with a video for the outreach part of the developer relations.

What is the team composition?

In total, about 20 people have been involved in the project, although not at the same time. We’ve primarily interacted with project managers, designers, and software engineers.

How did you come to work with XWP?

We were trying to solve some problems within the ecosystem. I went to an event and found someone I used to work with; we had a conversation, and one thing led to another. Then, we decided to hire them for the first time.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2017. We hired them for another project, and they’re currently working on it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The WordPress plug-in has around 500,000 users, so it’s been successful. Other than the adoption of the plug-in, we don’t have any other development metrics.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is one of their strong points. They have a great project manager; they’ve executed exceptionally well. Nowadays, they’re working on a project that I’m not leading directly, but we’ve had a positive experience in this area.

Most of our work is on GitHub, and then we use Slack for communication. Overall, a lot of the work happens in default because we work on an open-source project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve worked with them for five years and had outstanding engineers. One of them joined Google afterward and is now working on my team. Between 2017–2019, the development work in that unit area was excellent.

Also, they’re good at taking feedback. Sometimes we’re not pleased with the solution, but they fix it immediately.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have a specific comment. Sometimes junior engineers might not perform as expected, but they always handle the problem positively. They haven’t let us down.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a developer advocate at a multinational tech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We hired them to help us build a WordPress plug-in that makes it easy for users with no coding skills to build a full website template using Material Design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, we had a kickoff meeting to define the scope and goals of the project. After that, they proceeded with the work, handling both the development and design of the WordPress plug-in. They’re using various key technologies for development, such as React. Additionally, we’ve asked for their help in developing other popular WordPress plug-ins, and they’ve come up with some patterns that make sense.

What is the team composition?

We work with 10–15 people from their side, including engineers, UI/UX designers, and project managers.

How did you come to work with XWP?

I don’t know because the project was already ongoing when I joined in.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $200,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them on this project in October 2020, and it’s an ongoing collaboration.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve released the first version of the plug-in and continue to apply updates. It’s also great that we’re able to talk with their engineers directly and really iterate on the designs.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve done great in this regard — whenever we give them requirements, they break them down into small, simple tasks for their engineers to handle. They’ve also done well in terms of sticking to our schedules and doing QA testing to ensure anything that they build works.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their ability to ask the right questions and create a working plan despite having minimal details on certain requirements.

Are there any areas they could improve on?

I think everything will continue to get better as the project goes on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the SVP of digital operations at Vice Media. We are a media company at heart, and we have about 25 offices worldwide. I oversee the product and engineering teams. My teams are responsible for building and maintaining our websites. We also maintain the product infrastructure that allows us to produce and distribute content to consumers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We are migrating a CMS from one technology to our proprietary technology due to acquiring another site. Transferring data from one CMS to another can be challenging, so we wanted to engage a partner to assist us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We briefed XWP on our project goal, and they’re working on migrating data from another CMS to our internal CMS. They essentially help us execute strategy within our internal tools. They’re also helping with a custom-build development project, where they use our internal technology to build proprietary tools. They’re also working on building a transformer to connect two systems.

They’ve also offered their staff augmentation services for an upcoming app development project. They’ve sourced individuals to help us build a customized content creation app with proprietary code and back-and-frontend development assistance.

What is the team composition?

We work with roughly ten people, including a project manager, account lead, Amit (CRO), lead engineers, and backend engineers. 

How did you come to work with XWP?

We had a vendor list, and our team prepared an RFP for the project. XWP responded to the RFP, and we felt they were the best player to support the project, so we engaged them.  

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with XWP in May 2021, and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They are delivering on their timetables. Their frontend development assistance has contributed to a 40% increase in affiliate revenue year-over-year (YoY). Our team is delighted with the partnership; they’ve learned a lot from XWP and become strong advocates for them. 

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

They are excellent when it comes to managing projects. XWP creates a really positive work environment, which is very important. They’re great communicators, and they provide clear updates and response times. They help us improve our core processes and create project documentation so that we can supply that to any incoming staff. 

We were hesitant to engage a staff augmentation partner, but they’ve been incredibly easy to work with. They make the process seamless, and it feels like they're part of our team. Their project manager has been working with us for a while and is excellent. Both she and the account representative are very strong and responsive to our needs.  We use Jira as our primary project management and ticketing system and communicate via Slack and Google Meet. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I am impressed with the quality of skillsets within their network. They provide us with highly competent individuals who know exactly what we need and how to help us. I’m also impressed with the energy and belief they dedicate to our projects; they seem genuinely excited to partner with us.

Their responsiveness also sets them apart. XWP is always happy to accommodate our needs when we adjust or add projects. They’re very quick to react and find us the talent we need to accomplish our goals. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have nothing they could improve on. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise potential customers to have a clear roadmap and vision and to share it with the project managers and account leads at XWP. Knowing our long-term goal and vision has helped them help us.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Product Manager/Owner of a data journalism firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

XWP was hired by NCA Data Journalism to build our internal data storage and API capabilities that enable ingestion of UGC or data from organisations. The data ingested in the built database can then be queried by our publishing platform to tell automated stories.

SOLUTION

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

XWP was heavily recommended to the Data Journalism team by the former director of NCA Technology, Digital and Data group based on previous highly successful engagements with XWP.

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

Based on NCA Data Journalism's high level platform requirements and use cases, XWP was tasked to design the delivery of a database asset (with API capabilities) that can be queried by our publishing platform to tell automated stories. Other key deliverables include 

• A Wordpress interface for uploading data
• A registration system to manage contributors
• Secure development, testing and production environments

A dedicated team collaborated with us to initiate the project kick-off, development rhythm and progress communication format/methods (JIRA, Slack, Google doc).

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

Stan (Project manager, Cambodia) Danielle (Product Owner, Sydney) Utkarsh (Solution Architect) Chengmin (Lead engineer, China) Bharat (Engineer, India) Kamalesh (Senior Quality Assurance Specialist, USA)

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

XWP successfully planned, developed and deployed the NCA data storage asset with API capabilities within the allocated budget (dev time/set deadlines) and technical constraints. The XWP team demonstrated professional, collaborative, transparent and conscientious execution of the database build, including issue troubleshooting.

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

The project management was conducted professionally and with transparency. The XWP project manager conducted weekly one-on-one sessions with me (Product Manager) to discuss any administrative and project delivery concerns. Development use cases were clearly curated and expertly organised in JIRA by the Product Owner. We communicated through weekly check-ins, Slack and various shared documentation.

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

The XWP team demonstrated professional, collaborative, transparent and conscientious execution of the database build, including issue troubleshooting. They have also demonstrated rapid response to resolving development and quality assurance testing.

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

A timezone poster for the team members to serve as a reminder of the members' local time. It can be pinned in the shared Slack channel. For clients with complicated sign-off hierarchy and execution, the testing environment should be set up in the XWP servers and shared with clients for UAT. (This was ultimately set up for this project)

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing editor of digital for Australian Geographic, a publishing company. We publish a bi-monthly magazine, The Australian Geographic Journal.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We had seen an unexplained drop in traffic on our site, so we approached XWP about reviewing the site in terms of functionality and SEO to see if they could find and resolve the issue.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XWP ran a site audit and found out that we were sitting at about 30% in terms of load times, space, images, and site rendering and that it was meant to be up around 70-80%. 

They have done a marvelous job of addressing the drop in our traffic, and it’s now hitting back in the right direction. We’ve since talked to them about the more specific elements of the site in terms of the redesign, templating, and troubleshooting issues that arise day to day.

We're now working with them to optimize the site’s image gallery, which doesn’t really maximize the beautiful imagery that we want to highlight on the website. We’re working together to figure out a way to better design the pages on the site.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with a project manager, a product manager, and a couple of different developers at various stages. I’ve also worked with a digital designer and another person who helped us with our Google web storage.

How did you come to work with XWP?

XWP was recommended to us by another vendor that we had been using for something else. We had a discussion with XWP about what they could provide and in what timeframe and budget they could provide it. 

We had heard that XWP knew this space really well and had delivered on all of the expectations that each one of their clients needed to be addressed, so we decided to go with them for this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

XWP managed to increase our site speed by 40%, which has been incredibly useful. Our website was checking around one million page views per month, which dropped to around 750 page views once we started having issues. So once XWP came on board and ran the fixes that they deemed needed to be done, we're now seeing numbers queued up at over one million page views per month.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

XWP has performed really well in terms of project management. We primarily communicate through Slack, and we have weekly and fortnightly meetings as well. We also have a Jira board where we log and track specific tasks.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The XWP team is really easy to communicate with, and I’ve really enjoyed working with them. They're very open to all sorts of questions from non-tech people like me, and they’re very patient and willing to explain everything to me. Above all, they are always willing to go above and beyond to help us achieve our goals.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I sometimes feel like things are not moving forward as fast as I had anticipated. But I’m not really familiar with how long some of the technical fixes take, and they obviously have a lot of things on their plate just within our organization.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’d be useful to have someone in-house who knows the technical aspects of the project to manage the relationship, just so you have an accurate idea of how long various tasks should take and how much they should theoretically cost.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Automattic is a diverse company. We’ve recently acquired Tumblr and other major web properties, but we’re best known for WordPress, which is one of our main products. I’m currently working with the advertising division of the company, but during the time of this project, I was the tech lead of the Jetpack division.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

The Jetpack division creates a suite of plugins that we distribute to standalone WordPress sites. We identified an opportunity to produce a standalone WordPress plugin focused on site performance, and this came out of conversations that I had with people from XWP. We also brainstormed different offerings that we could bring to market. 

They were around for a lot of those initial conversations, so once I got the internal go-ahead to productize some of those ideas, it felt only natural to engage XWP for the development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XWP helped us crank out the 1.0 version of a plugin. We had discussions about the different ways we could build this solution so that it could actually work for the high-end sites that XWP works with all the time. Apart from their expertise around development and best industry practices, they also brought insight as to what out-of-the-box custom performance solutions could work for big sites.

As our long-time development partner, XWP was already familiar with our internal development tools. We built and iterated on the design ourselves, but we worked alongside their team to get feedback. 

We also worked on a couple of additional things. For example, when we were looking at how to host the backend service, we brought in XWP’s CTO who talked to us about different ways of storing and scaling data on Google Cloud. 

There were also other projects that we were working on at the same time as this one. I should mention that we worked on a separate project that was about the AMP compatibility for Jetpack, but XWP was actually paid by Google.

What is the team composition?

While I was engaged with them, I was initially working with a project manager from their side. There were also 2–3 developers at any given time.

How did you come to work with XWP?

XWP has worked with Automattic on and off over the years on a number of different projects. They’ve even collaborated with us and Google to build the AMP plugin for WordPress.

They’re WordPress VIP partners, which is a big part of our business, so I was already familiar with them. However, the main reason I took them on for this project was that I had met them at various conferences. It was those conversations that led to the idea behind this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started around June 2020. They’ve ramped things down but I don’t know exactly when.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Developers are a scarce resource, so when we need to ramp up and do intense initial development for a new product, we often find ourselves resource-constrained. It was a really good thing that XWP had developers that they could dedicate to this project pretty quickly. 

It was also fortunate that their people were familiar with WordPress as this made it quicker and easier for us to develop the product. With them involved, we were able to put the 1.0 version of our product in front of people while we strategized with our own internal team in the background.

That ability to ramp up and their existing expertise and reputation in the performance space were the main reasons we engaged them. In software, momentum counts for a lot, and in this particular case, XWP gave us the momentum that we needed to actually show progress and continue investing in the product. During the time I was working with them, I was quite happy.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

We mostly handled our own project management. There weren’t any critical problems; it was mostly our own internal wrangling. XWP was always responsive and transparent. 

We had regular catch-up meetings with them, and we always exchanged honest feedback on our progress, how people were fitting in, and how many hours we would need. They were always very accommodating and open about the opportunities and limitations on their side. That part made them pretty easy to deal with.

Their developers were based in different parts of the world, but they were able to hook into our processes. They’re reliable and conscientious developers; they did exactly what they said they were going to do. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

XWP has a commitment to excellence. They really want to be seen as premium developers in the WordPress ecosystem, and I think that shows in their work. They don’t try to cut corners, and they don’t baffle you into paying for things you don’t need. 

At the same time, they are pretty flexible and open. Hitting goals and staying flexible at the same time is really hard to do in software, but that they were able to do both speaks to their professionalism. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing really leaps to mind. There were things I would’ve changed about the project, but nothing around how XWP performed. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

This is advice I would give anyone working with a third party. Come in with the clearest idea in terms of why you are trying to do what you are trying to do. Have something really measurable and concrete. 

Working with third-party developers can be expensive so you’ll also want to make sure that you’re getting the bang for your buck. You don’t want to build something that you’re only going to throw away. The work should pay for itself.