XWP

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the digital solutions manager for Good Friday Appeal. We’re a nonprofit organization that raises money for the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We had a reasonably old website. It was hard to maintain, and its structure wasn’t easy to navigate.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XWP helped us identify the key visitor groups visiting our site and re-designed it to provide the best experience for each group. XWP created our new site using Gutenberg on WordPress to provide the most powerful editorial content experience for our communications team. As our website has a large visitor count, it was also critical that the new website was high-performance.

What is the team composition?

We worked with about 8–10 people at XWP. The team was very diverse; everyone worked remotely across the globe, which was fine for our rollout because we were all locked down anyway. We had designers, UX experts, front and backend developers, QA people, a product owner, a project manager, and a data migration person on the team.

How did you come to work with XWP?

We asked for an RFP from a couple of organisations we’d identified in the non-profit sector. Since Good Friday Appeal is also associated with News Corp, we asked their digital experts for recommendations for partners they’d worked with and were happy with. They suggested we approach XWP.

XWP recognised Good Friday Appeal as an iconic Australian nonprofit, and were interested in working with us. Their experience gave them a different perspective, and we felt that we could learn a lot from them. As XWP works with large high-tech customers we also knew they had exposure to great ideas and technology.

How much have you invested with them?

The website was around $100,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our partnership in August 2020, and we completed the rollout in January 2021. Since then, they’ve been managing our support. We have a monthly agreement, and they fine-tune our features or do new features for us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The new website looks great. It has significantly improved editorial workflow in the team. We can achieve great-looking results really easily. Two weeks ago, a board member described it as "a quantum leap", so everyone is really happy with it.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

Amit (Chief Revenue Officer) was our project sponsor, and he was great. We could go to him for anything that we need to escalate or solve quickly, and he would get on it as a priority. He was highly committed to our project.

We used Jira and Slack as tools.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It was their commitment to the relationship. Project sponsorship is one of the best aspects of our partnership with XWP.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Lockdown presented some problems, and the remote model was a bit difficult for some areas, like design.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go into it with a good understanding of what you’re hoping to achieve and make sure that you’re communicating well and providing the information they need to work efficiently. Also, put some trust in their expertise and what they bring to the table.

For example, XWP suggested putting a live stream of the telethon – which is televised on a commercial TV channel — on our website. It was one of our most popular pages, and we’re considering putting it on our homepage for next year’s appeal.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of product and marketing for a media production company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

 We had a poor experience with our previous web development firm. They were at a point where they weren’t able to finish the project they were contracted to deliver. We wanted to hire another development firm to fix some of the issues the previous firm hadn’t resolved, as well as provide ongoing maintenance of our WordPress site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The biggest area of focus has been getting our site ready for Google’s core web vitals. That’s a big area of focus.

XWP has also offered a roadmap we could follow to utilize the rest of our development hours. We haven’t taken them up on the roadmap yet, as we’re focused on the core web vitals, but we’re going to leverage it down the line to ensure that our e-commerce environment is set up optimally, that our WordPress site is efficient internally, and that our UX is working for us.

What is the team composition?

We have one account manager that handles the business side of our relationship, as well as a project manager who’s our primary contact for all development work. There are also two developers that work on our account. 

How did you come to work with XWP?

I’m in a number of Slack channels related to journalism, and Leo (Head of Partnerships and Project Strategy), our project manager, reached out to me in response to a question I asked the channel about web development recommendations. Where XWP stood out from the other choices I considered is that they offered a solution that was exactly what we were looking for.

Most of the other agencies are project-focused — they set out to build specific websites or features — but XWP offered to do our maintenance, which is what we were looking for. They also offered us a certain number of hours each month that we could put toward progress in our website.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $4,000 per month with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since November 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

XWP has helped our website load faster, and we’ve seen some improved traffic due to changes they’ve made. They’ve also helped us in our search experience. It was pretty terrible and almost unusable in some respects, and XWP fixed it easily, making it easier for customers to search for our stories.

I anticipate that we’ll see even more improvement, as XWP is still in the middle of the work.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

The communication has been great. We get regular reports and have a check-in before each month to determine their work priorities. They haven’t had any issues delivering what they say they’re going to deliver.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We had a project that we’re considering outside of our current work, and I needed quick numbers to present at a fundraising opportunity. XWP was very responsive and put together my request quickly, giving me the best chance to raise money and get the work done.

We also had a really great call last week with the account manager and XWP’s CFO. They wanted to learn and understand more about our business model, how the funnel works, what our process is like, and what our pain points might be so that they could offer recommendations for how to improve them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had a couple of launches where things haven’t worked and XWP has had to make some quick fixes to enable the required functionality. That is more of a function of our site not being built properly, however. The changes look alright on our test site, but they don’t always look that way when they’re pushed on the live site. I don’t blame XWP for this, but it’s something we’ve had to deal with.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The more you have together on your side about what you want them to do, the more you’ll get out of the development. You’re going to use up some of the hours talking about the specific intricacies of everything. If you can do some advanced work and come to them with a fully fleshed-out idea, then they can accomplish it rather quickly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

PMC is a large multi-brand publishing company, with over 20 major household brands, including Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, THR and WWD. As Vice President of Product Delivery, I oversee all major development projects and run the Project and Product Management teams. I was also the Project Manager on the Rolling Stone Replatform and Redesign.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired XWP to help us complete the migration of the Rolling Stone website and 50 years of content over to a WordPress VIP Go setup based on our core technology best practices. We also needed to completely redesign the website to relaunch the brand alongside the revamped print magazine. This was a very high profile launch with a fixed deadline and a huge focus on front-end quality.

Our goals when relaunching rollingstone.com were:

• Map all content to a new SEO focussed taxonomy structure
• Ensure all content was mapped successfully
• Launch with a high degree of front-end 'polish' and match our PMC produced designs
• Ensure that all Editorial and Business teams were able to complete their daily tasks on the new system in efficient and easy to complete ways
• Ensure that our internal product & engineering teams would be able to maintain and develop on the site moving forward
• Ensure that the site was competitive with regards to speed and performance.

SOLUTION

How did you select XWP and what were the deciding factors?

We had previously worked with XWP and were impressed with their front-end skills and their project management approach. They had worked with us on other high-profile, hard deadline-driven projects and successfully delivered. The deciding factors were the quality of their front-end work and the collaborative approach to development - including strong project management, collaboration on requirements and acceptance criteria and our trust in their delivery.

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

We had a kick-off meeting where we talked through our designs, and our product notes. After this, the team broke the backlog down into sprints. Every 2 weeks the PMC team (Product Lead, Project Lead, and Tech Lead) met with the XWP team to go over the upcoming sprint - confirming requirements and acceptance criteria and answering technical questions. We also had demos every 2 weeks of the work completed too.

The scope of the website was a full WordPress VIP Go-based site, with the following core post types and templates:

• Homepage
• Article Page
• Featured Article Page
• Gallery
• Video
• List
• Section Front

As well as some secondary page templates such as author page, tag page etc. As well as building out both the WordPress admin interface and front-end templates for each, XWP also worked on migrating 50 years of content (250,000+ pieces of content) to these new post types and ensuring that content displayed well and was updateable where required. To help with the migration from a PostgreSQL platform to WordPress VIP, XWP utilised Google Cloud Platforms.

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

We worked with 6-8 people on the project, including a Project Manager, an Architect, a Product Owner / QA Specialist and a team of developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project delivered to our exceptionally hard deadline, with a complete migration of over 250,000 articles, videos and images. The quality of the website at launch was notable.

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

XWP used Agile Scrum for delivery, with 2 week sprints. They utilised their Jira instance to track stories, acceptance criteri and velocity. PMC joined XWP in daily standups, and we also used Slack to communicate ad-hoc where required.

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

The quality of the deliverables was high, but for me the most unique thing about XWP was the strength of their project management resources and processes. It was a relief to work with an agency who truly understands the foundation of Agile principles and are able to utilise and make work in a client / vendor relationship and on a project with a unmoveable deadline.

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

As with all projects, we hit a few speedbumps on the way with delivery going slightly slower than anticipated, but XWP were able to make up the time when needed.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a media management platform, providing services centered around creating, organizing, and optimizing images and videos to be published on the internet. My role as the head of technology partnerships involves working on integrations between our solution and other SaaS providers. I’m also in charge of the go-to-market activities related to those integrations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We were looking to revamp and create a next-generation version of our WordPress plug-in. Our main goal was to make sure that our integration was a natural fit for the WordPress ecosystem.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

XWP developed our updated WordPress integration. The first step was really reviewing the scope and design of the solution, collaborating with XWP’s team to figure out how we could improve the plug-in. Whereas we were the experts in our solution’s ecosystem, they were the experts in WordPress. Together, we were able to produce a plug-in that leveraged the best of both worlds. 

It was a huge help to have an outside expert explain how we could more naturally fit our plug-in into WordPress. For example, there were certain features as well as specific ways that users would interact with WordPress that we needed to maintain. XWP made sure that those elements still came through, whether a user was using our plug-in or not. That way, our end users would be more accepting of our plug-in.

Since launching the integration, we’ve continued to make updates to gain traction in terms of end user adoption.

What is the team composition? 

We’ve worked with several team members, including developers, architects, and program managers. 

How did you come to work with XWP?

We asked a company in our network for some recommendations, and XWP was one of them. One of the reasons we went with them was the overlap between the customers that they were working with and the ones who would likely use our plug-in. Another was that they were so well-respected in the community.

What is the status of this engagement?

The main project lasted between June 2018–April 2020, but we’re still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Before we launched the new plug-in, we were seeing a downward trend of about 0.5% per week in deinstallations. After we launched in April 2020 and got through a few initial revisions, we started to reverse our position. We’re now seeing an uptrend with a 0.5% increase in installations week over week.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been great to work with from a project management standpoint. Everything is well-run and organized, and deliveries are on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed with the quality of the people and their deep expertise in the WordPress ecosystem. That’s why we hired them, and they’ve fulfilled that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

With a lot of consulting and development agencies, it can sometimes be hard to predict the fluctuations in spend, which makes it hard to budget. This is something that we’re working with them now, and they’re looking to figure out ways that will help us. Cost fluctuations aren’t necessarily specific to XWP but rather a challenge that the industry as a whole faces.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that you’re shopping around in the industry and take a look at any overlap that you could leverage between your company and theirs. That means understanding who they are, who they’re interacting with, and the projects that they’re working on. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Answers.com, a Q&A platform that focuses on homework and homework help.  

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We initially hired XWP to dive into our user behavior and address our website performance.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope of the project was pretty broad at first. They audited the front- and backend, third-party integrations, and various other platforms on our site. Then they identified how to improve the site’s performance and divided the project into different phases.  

In the first phase they addressed some easy issues such as input lags, order of operations, and on-site SEO features.

Then we moved on to an advertising technology (ad tech) audit and focused on delivering ads as quickly as we could.

Finally, they worked with us to build out a full AMP (accelerated mobile pages) on Google solution.

What is the team composition?

We worked with about 5–10 people, including a project manager, a technical team, the CFO, and the CEO.

How did you come to work with XWP?

We ran into XWP at a WordPress conference a few years ago.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent less than $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from January–May 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They were fantastic. They improved our first input delay and total blocking time. Overall, our page speed improved by 10%–30%.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated with them at least once a week but would speak with them more frequently depending on what they were working on. At some points, we spoke with them daily. We also used a Slack channel to stay in contact with them.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very knowledgeable and contributed a lot to our project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They don’t need to improve anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communicate everything you can about their business. We explained to them what our business was and what our plans were, which gave them a complete picture to work with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of a lab testing service.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

Our platform evolved over a number of years. We wanted to bring in additional WordPress expertise because not every developer necessarily understands WordPress or e-commerce websites.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XWP redesigned our website and helped evolve it into a next-generation platform. We had new company assets and a new direction for the brand. Their team helped us find the visual language to communicate those changes throughout the website. They also helped with the UX portion of our website, which centered around improving usability and incorporating e-commerce best practices. We also engaged them to migrate our website to a new server environment.

XWP is involved in our project planning calls, and then we identify a scope of work, including timelines and budgets. Their team then executes the agreed-upon deliverables. They also advise us on e-commerce best practices and maintain our system.

What is the team composition?

I've closely worked with Leo (Head of Partnerships and Product Strategy), Tanya (Principal Project Manager & Account Manager), Amit (Chief Revenue Officer), Matt (Senior Engineer & Architect), and Ravi (Senior Engineer & Architect). There are a couple of other people who also work on our projects.

How did you come to work with XWP?

I asked our hosting provider if they had recommendations for agencies specializing in WordPress. XWP came highly recommended. After an initial conversation, I decided to engage them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent close to $100,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around April 2020, and we’re on our third project right now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We track our website's speed, conversion rates, and revenue. Every time we deploy a change, those metrics fluctuate. Our website's load capacity increased, and it’s currently unlimited. We haven’t experienced bottlenecks in over 6 months.

Our homepage's speed ranking also dramatically improved. XWP helped us increase the ranking from a D or C to an A. That’s wonderful for desktop and mobile platforms. Our conversion rate has also started to improve. Depending on the page, we’ve seen a 2%–30% improvement.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira for development and usually communicate via Slack. Their communication and responsiveness have been great. They ultimately deliver on what we’ve agreed to. Overall, we’ve had a positive experience.

However, we've had challenges around staying on budget and on time. We've also had challenges around scoping overall, so ensuring we have clarity around exactly what we’ll get. Every time we have a deliverable, however, it usually surpasses expectations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their WordPress competency has given me peace of mind. They understand the infrastructure and ensure smooth deployments, which are rare qualities. Working with them has given us more security.

Are there any areas they could improve?

XWP should closely monitor projects’ times and budgets. They should also have a well-developed scope upfront. That has been a shortfall.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clearly communicate your needs and expectations for the overall business goals. It’s also important that you communicate your limitations around schedules and budgets. Stay on top of your requests and provide feedback on an ongoing basis.  

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of product management, delivery, and operations for a digital radio company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We support over 70 websites; some are local radio properties, while others are national content magazines or syndicated radio show properties. XWP provides development services for a variety of projects.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially brought on XWP because we needed to entirely redesign and launch a new website in just eight weeks. On top of that, we needed to add a ton of features that didn’t exist on the WordPress theme we were using. To complete the project on time, they had a team in the US and another in Australia working around the clock.

Since then, they’ve continued to provide development support for all of our sites. Last year, they helped us update all of our 70 platforms from WordPress to WordPress VIP Go.

We also have two sites with custom themes that we constantly update and are building new features on. One of them is extremely bloated because we built it to service radio stations, TV channels, and cable networks. XWP came to clean up a lot of technical debt from our previous developers. Then they created a new foundation to quickly build a WordPress site in PHP.

In other projects, they’ve worked with our video provider to dig into our APIs, and have even brought on an extra developer to work on improving our page speed.

What is the team composition?

Right now, there are five people on the team, but we’ve worked with about 8­–9 people in the past. I’ve had the same lead architect for three years now, the same account manager, two developers, and an amazing product manager.

How did you come to work with XWP?

They flew to our offices to get to know us. As soon as we met with them, we knew they were invested in our project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with XWP in January 2017 and our partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their development team delivers high-quality work, and it has had a positive impact on our business. Even though we’ve been hit hard by Google’s algorithm changes and the COVID-19 pandemic, traffic to our site has remained consistent.

Additionally, our product team is still able to release a quality product because of XWP’s work.

XWP is the third team I’ve worked with, and they’re the most amazing partner we’ve had. They don’t feel like they’re an external development team at all.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

They follow an agile methodology and work in sprints. Our account representative manages our day-to-day, and she is very detailed and organized I was struggling with organization, but she has helped me a ton. Their product lead follows up with me regularly to provide user stories when they’re requested.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re emotionally invested in our product and making sure that their deliverables meet our criteria. Rather than simply following orders, they propose ideas, ask if we’ve considered other options, and review analytics.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

There isn’t anything I can think of. They’re a great partner and I would recommend them to anyone.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take advantage of the product services that they offer. It’s great to have someone on their side helping the developers work through the user stories.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product engineering for an online news company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

We needed developers who could support our WordPress sites and hit the ground running.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

XWP works with us in two ways: staff augmentation and end-to-end development. Each developer signs on with a contract for 3–6 months to help our backend team. Recently, we’ve used them to work on the full execution of our websites, from design to launch. 

The best example of that would be a donation website that we sponsored for a children’s hospital. We started off with a workshop attended by our stakeholders and XWP’s team. They went through the customer journey and planned it out with our business. Then, they created page templates and presented them to us, which we showed to our board. Everyone loved it, so they implemented the designs into the frontend.

The final product was a landing page that capitalized on the big donation surges that would typically happen around Easter. We needed the site to collect donations all across Australia, so it had a lot of integrations. They integrated the site to Salesforce, third-party solutions, and more to coordinate donations.

What is the team composition? 

We’ve worked closely with their project managers and CRO. Because of our close relationship with them, we’ve also interacted with the senior tech leads who oversaw the whole project.

How did you come to work with XWP?

The relationship was established before my time, but I believe they were recommended as a WordPress VIP agency partner. At the time, we were moving from a Java-based CRM to WordPress, so we hired them to help us out. We’ve been with them ever since.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $200,000–$1 million so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership started back in 2014 and is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The donation site recently went live, so we don’t have much traffic on it yet. However, I can say that our board loves the new web designs and are big fans of the site.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

The team is flexible. They’ve managed their end-to-end projects really well using Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

XWP is easy to do business with because they listen. Personally, I value customer service, and it’s clear that customer satisfaction is an important factor for them. They go the extra mile for their clients, which is something you don’t always find these days with partners.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you establish the partnership correctly, then both parties will gain a lot from the experience. Let them understand your business and then work with them. They have amazing ideas and are very efficient because they know what they’re doing. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of brand and digital experience at Pantheon. I manage our design work and the web team that builds our website. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

I hired XWP for two projects: one was for a customer journey project and the other was a maintenance project to improve the performance of our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

For the UX project, XWP helped us map out how one of our most valuable prospects would navigate our website. The goal was to get that prospect to a point where they would fill out lead forms. We could then optimize that information to increase our growth down that customer journey and funnel more leads. 

Cathi (UX Researcher & Consultant) helped us resolve any pain points the user experienced on that path, conducting user interviews and mapping out personas. At the end of it, she created a presentation that identified opportunities to improve our journey.

In the web maintenance project, they partnered with my web team to come up with a backlog of items that would increase the performance of our site — things like usability, implementing lazy loading, cleaning up our JavaScript and Google Tag Manager. It was really about cleaning up or existing system or modifying how something was being deployed.

What is the team composition? 

We worked with Tanya (Principal Project Manager), Bartos (Frontend Engineer), Mike (Principal Engineer), Kaspars (Principal Engineer), and Cathi. I was also in touch with Amit (CRO), Leo (Head of Partnerships & Product Strategy), and Derek (CTO).

How did you come to work with XWP?

Pantheon is in the WebOps business, which means we partner with agencies like XWP to build and maintain websites for other businesses. When I was looking for a partner for this project, I reached out internally to collect a shortlist of recommendations, and XWP came highly recommended.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $10,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I’d started talking with them for a different project back in November 2019 but lost them after the scope and budget changed. Once 2020 started, I approached them with the customer journey and web maintenance projects. Those lasted until about the end of May 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In partnering with them, they met my expectations in a lot of areas and then exceeded them in others.

For the customer journey project, the main success for us was that they completed the customer research. I looked at the recommendations that they provided and ran them through my experimentation program to validate the ideas. Most of the insights ended up being wins for us.

For the site maintenance, they helped me improve my website in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to do without them. We ran performance tests at the beginning and end of the project and were able to measure an increase in our performance scores. In addition, Leo and his team put together a report outlining all of the work that we did, going into detail about the lists we saw, and documenting the actions we took to close those results.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

Working with Tanya was one of the better parts of the relationship. I knew I wanted a project manager because I was very busy with our website and other initiatives. I liked being able to rely on her so that I didn’t have to manage everything myself.

We had weekly stand-ups where we would meet as a group to discuss work. There was also a Slack channel that incorporated both of our companies and various stakeholders on the project as well as email. Asana and GitHub were our main project management tools. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

What I liked about working with XWP was their ability to demonstrate the impact that they were going to have on my business. Other agencies I talked to would only give me a list of services, but XWP drew the connections to the results. It was much more measurable than what I’d heard elsewhere. 

Not only did they do the work that I hired them to do, but they were also able to provide an analysis of their impact after the fact. This was a great report to have because I could show my superiors and leadership how we spent the budget and our direct results.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only area where I felt like I could’ve used more resources was our UX research. There were some parts where we needed UX copywriting, which they couldn’t provide. It’s not like they’d promised me one in the first place, but it would’ve been nice if they’d fleshed out those provided services more.

Overall, there wasn’t anything that I would consider disappointing about the project. They delivered on what they promised in a timely manner, and we didn’t go over budget. If anything, we had a bit of budget left over to invest in items that I didn’t think we’d be able to tackle.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am on the Chrome partnerships team at Google, and I'm a manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XWP?

One of the key opportunities that we have collaborated on is development and also an AMP WordPress plugin.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XWP provided development services to Google in developing the actual plugin, writing the code, and getting that code reviewed and contributed to WordPress. The official AMP plugin that now exists was built with the participation of XWP's engineers. 

There were also project management and program management services involved in running that whole approach in collaboration with Google. The part that I am more familiar with is our joint efforts in helping organizations globally make use of this plugin and become aware of it for their businesses and their websites.

Initially, XWP first put together the proposal for what the plugin would look like. It has gone through a lot of iterations since then. Then they identified and provided a team of developers to build on this version with input from relevant Google teams. Generally, we've collaborated on activities that will increase the adoption of this solution.

It’s an iterative process, and the plugin is still being developed. A couple of years ago, we also started conducting various joint code market efforts which included conducting joint events, for example, or having talks with clients and partners, organizations, and companies that were interested in implementing this plugin for their site. 

How did you come to work with XWP?

One of the reasons we chose XWP was their standing in the WordPress community. They were able to demonstrate previous experience in delivering products of this scale and nature for other clients.

Another key element was the portfolio of clients and companies that they worked with in terms of building websites. 

That indicated to me personally that they were a great fit in collaborating on go-to-market strategies because they have a great understanding of the global web development market, they have great contacts, and they’re able to provide value in making the right connections and making things happen.

What is the status of this engagement?

My involvement in the project began in August 2019, but I believe Google started working with them sometime before that. It’s an ongoing project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

One of the strongest metrics, especially for this particular case, is the fact that the plugin now has upwards of half a million installs on WordPress. That is probably the largest and most visible number and in no small part thanks to XWP’s involvement.

How did XWP perform from a project management standpoint?

There were multiple parts to the project, and I think the two biggest ones were the development and go-to-market. I know that on the development side, they’re probably using project management tools that Google provided. 

However, on the go-to-market side, XWP performs really well, and we can see the results in the adoption rates with the plugin. We used G Suite which is Google Cloud’s project management tool.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the things that I appreciate the most is their ability to provide really deep technical expertise. They know what they are talking about. When you talk to people on XWP’s leadership and engineering teams, you feel the depth of knowledge there.

Agility and flexibility is another one. We have had multiple situations where we really had to turn on a dime when it came to organizing events or other elements of market strategy. Something I appreciate in a partner is when they’re able to respond quickly and adjust to the circumstances.

XWP is versatile in being able to identify external or internal talent needed at any moment in time for anything, from extra plugin development to catering an event and everything that happens in between.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing springs to mind immediately. We definitely didn’t achieve everything we wanted but most of it was not down to XWP lacking a feature in some big capacity. It was a great partnership in that respect.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

What has worked really well for us and what XWP is really strong at is a combination of development and bringing the developed solution to market. 

They’re a great web development company, and if you’re looking to build a website, it’s probably going to work out really well for you. If you are looking to engage them for a breadth of services, that would be their strongest suit.