Aten Design Group

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the deputy director of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Human Rights Watch is an NGO in over 90 countries worldwide that monitors human rights and presses for change. The film festival is part of it — it shares human rights stories and tries to encourage audiences to take action.

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design Group?

Our website was over 10 years old and running on the outdated Drupal 7 version. We needed to upgrade our site to be on the latest Drupal software. We also wanted to ensure that our film festival website had an accessibility audit to ensure that audience members with disabilities would be able to access our films and programs.

Another challenge we faced was that film festivals took on a new form during the last three years. Now, they’re taking place in person and online. For example, our screenings were in New York City, London, Toronto, and Los Angeles. However, digital screenings were available across the US. We didn’t know how to explain to the audience how they could see the films and multiple entry points.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Aten Design Group came on board to sort out the best way to communicate all of our festival’s offerings and ensure that our website was available and accessible to show the information on mobile devices. We had to completely redesign the site’s structure and migrate it to a new Drupal platform. They updated our visual identity on the website, so they worked on design and development. Additionally, they took feedback from our audience to come up with a completely customized model that allowed us to showcase and feature everything we wanted.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 23 members of their staff.

How did you come to work with Aten Design Group?

We did an RFP for our previous website, and they stood out. After doing a project with them, we knew they were accountable, prompt, and on budget. They could provide the flexibility and creativity we needed for this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began the project in June 2021, and the website was completed by December 2021. However, we’ve engaged them on an ongoing basis for site maintenance.

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

About 50,000 users have used the site since it launched in December.

How did Aten Design Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Their performance was absolutely brilliant; they were experts. We had weekly meetings, and they were transparent about meeting the project’s goals and communicating any challenges. Also, they stayed entirely on budget. We were happy with their excellent project management.

They used Jira and Basecamp, and we communicated through email. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were excellent problem solvers. Aten Design Group navigated our uncertainties on how to communicate the range of events we were holding. Also, they stood out for their project management skills and transparency. Their team communicated daily throughout the process and showed us how they were doing, the challenges they faced, and their plans to solve them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

In order to have a project that you feel proud of, you need to devote the time to ensure you’re communicating clearly with them. Aten Design Group looks to collaborate with their clients and is receptive to feedback. In the end, they led us to a great outcome. It was completely customized to what we needed, and it couldn’t have happened without flexibility and communication on both sides.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of enterprise marketing for Surgery Partners, a company that owns and manages short-stay surgical facilities. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design Group?

We tapped Aten Design for their web development services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Aten Design has built websites for us, including our corporate website. We’ve branched out from there and created several other websites for our hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, and physician practices. The team has worked on creating similar designs while giving each website a unique look.  

Moreover, Aten Design has organized the sites’ backend using Drupal; we’re using Pantheon for hosting. This way, our sites have a single upstream capability — we can make updates and changes to multiple sites at once. Their resources have added UX design features to the sites, too. 

In terms of features and functionality, we want our core website to spread awareness about our company and services. Apart from that, we use it to find partnership opportunities. We capture leads through the contact forms for our surgical facilities while providing information to patients and medical providers. 

Further, Aten Design has built an application portal where patients can log in and get necessary registration forms. Using this portal, the patients can communicate their medical history with our nursing staff and other providers. This way, they won’t be bogged down by a bunch of paperwork and questions on the day of their surgery. 

What is the team composition?

We work with an account representative and Janice (Director of Project Manager), who manages our day-to-day needs. The web developers handle the website and its backend, while the project manager manages developers’ schedules. 

How did you come to work with Aten Design Group?

We found Aten Design through a professional referral from somebody we’d worked with in the past. As soon as we looked into the team, we knew what they’d created for their other clients — it was exactly what we were looking for, so we hired them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $80,000–$100,000 on our initial project. From there, we’ve had the team on retainer for $70,000–$90,000 per year. In total, our overall investment is around $600,000–$700,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership started in January 2017, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

We’ve seen significant improvements in our traffic, site speed, and navigation. Overall, Aten Design has met our expectations. 

How did Aten Design Group perform from a project management standpoint?

The team always meets deadlines and does things within our budget. Their communication is strong whether it’s via phone, email, Slack, Jira, Basecamp, or Teams. They’re willing to communicate in a variety of formats to ensure that they can get a hold of us when necessary. 

Moreover, they always make sure we know where we are in terms of budget. If something needs to be done right away, they communicate it with us. We have the flexibility to dip into our hours for the next month so we won’t go over budget. This flexibility has been truly useful for us since we need to be strict with our budgets. 

Further, having a core group of developers has been truly helpful for us. We don’t have to re-teach and onboard new developers all the time. Aten Design’s resources have organized a ticketing system for us, too, and it’s been a game-changer. 

Having more than 120 websites, we have the daunting task to keep them updated consistently. The ticketing system automatically creates tickets from emails coming from our facilities across the country. The tickets go to the developers’ queue, and the manager organizes and prioritizes those tickets from there. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Project management is one of Aten Design’s strongest skill sets. We have an excellent project manager — I don’t know what we’d do without Janice.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

They should keep the same pool of developers on each of our websites so that the resources have the familiarity with our CMS and how our sites communicate with one another. To be fair, they’re quite good at this, and they know how vital this is for our company. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about your end goals. Aten Design has the skill sets, knowledge, and experience to meet your goals. Given that, be decisive on what you want to accomplish — they’ll help you navigate a path to get there. I understand that it’s sometimes difficult for a company to truly know their end goals. Nonetheless, you can trust Aten Design to get you there if you know your goals ahead of time.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the department head of information technology and web services at the University of Colorado.

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design Group?

We needed a company that could help us migrate our site from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially hired Aten Design Group to help us migrate our website from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9. This involved moving our entire web presence and making sure that we had continuity in our service and that all of the details and page content were moved fluidly. We also had to do a lot of cleanup from what we had in the previous iterations of Drupal.

Then, after our UI/UX developer left for another job opportunity, we engaged Aten Design Group again as an operational help until we got another UI/UX person back in our group. Aten Design Group helped us a lot with the backlogs that we had for the website. We already had preexisting themes and UI templates built out, so a lot of their work involved helping us transition some of the underlying frameworks and such. They did help us with some UI/UX capabilities — they helped us implement new view options for our new databases list.

Aside from that, we worked with them to bring prominence to new and trial databases that we would add to our collections so that our users would have a nice sorted list to draw attention to the trial database. They also helped us with some post-migration and formatting issues.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager and a senior developer from Aten Design Group.

How did you come to work with Aten Design Group?

We came across Aten Design Group at a Drupal conference.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $40,000. The initial website migration project cost around $20,000, and we paid another $20,000 for our work extension this past year until this month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from June 2021–May 2022.

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

Overall, we had a pretty smooth migration. We migrated the website from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 within a 30-minute window, which was fantastic. Aside from that, working with Aten Design Group enabled my team to get some of the backlog projects cleared and out of the way, especially since we moved to Drupal 9. A lot of those previous issues had been cleared up with the migration to the newer technology as well, but there were still a few lingering items that we were able to resolve thanks to Aten Design Group’s help.

How did Aten Design Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Aten Design Group was outstanding in terms of project management. They established clear communication. Whenever we came across issues, it was really easy to hop on a call or chat with them and sort them out really quickly. Having our project hosted in Basecamp also helped a ton in terms of our back in forth.

Overall, I couldn’t be happier. It was a definite change working with how they’re set up as a vendor versus other companies that I’ve worked with in the past. After every weekly meeting, our project manager sent us weekly recaps, and they were really clear about follow-ups on our end and their end. They always made sure that we met our deadlines, and that was crucial to the success of our projects.

We primarily communicated with them through Zoom, email, Slack, and Basecamp.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The thing that differentiated Aten Design Group was their commitment to us and our projects’ success. I was really impressed that we had a project manager assigned to us as a customer. That really smoothed out a lot of the operational questions that we had or anything that came up in the project. They were very quick on either getting that information back to us or getting us in touch with the right people to give us answers. This made me really feel valued as a customer, knowing that whether our work mode shifted, they were there to help us out. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I really don't have anything to criticize them on.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a developer at the IT department of a library on a medical university campus.

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design Group?

We hired them to help us update our development environment for me to have more of a continuous integration approach to my development work.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Aten helped us update our development environment. I had been developing the library website for a year, and they enabled us to use Lando and Docker to store the database and files in our repository. That way, my colleagues could work on the website as well. Other key technologies used were Git, Composer, and Drupal 9. From there, they helped me move the site to the proper environment to ensure everything was working before launching it.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a few people because they had a whole team coordinating the work. I mostly worked with Jordan (Senior Developer), who helped me get the environment set up, and his supervisor Matthew (Senior Developer Manager), who helped when Jordan wasn’t available. Additionally, I worked with Sally (VP of Client Services) and Aundrea (Senior Project Manager). 

How did you come to work with Aten Design Group?

I went to graduate school with a former employee of theirs. I also knew about Aten because I’m a librarian, and Aten works with many libraries around the country and sponsors Drupal webinars and conferences. I’ve worked with Drupal since 2013, and I’ve been attending Aten’s webinars for years. 

My supervisor also knew about Aten, so we wanted to go to them first when the need arose. Moreover, they were local, and we knew other people who had worked with them and that their work was good. I felt lucky that they could help us because I already liked them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November 2021–March 2022.

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

I’m happy with Aten’s work. Previously, my development work was a very slow process, and the solution has advanced my ability to deliver faster. The team did everything we asked them to do and more. Not only did they help build the environment, but they also helped with theoretical and practical knowledge. During our first meeting, Aten knew what we needed and helped us work through the terminology and how the process would function. 

How did Aten Design Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was perfect. We used Slack to communicate and Basecamp for task management. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed with Aten’s communication skills and expertise. Jordan usually had the answers for us, and if something came up where he didn’t, he would tap into the knowledge of the entire development team. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any constructive feedback for them; they’re a great company. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask all of the questions! Even if you think the question is dumb, ask it so that you can learn everything that you’re there to learn.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of marketing of a publishing company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design Group?

We needed help in redeveloping our site; many users used to get lost in our platform, and we had high bounce rates.

What was the scope of their involvement?                                                                                                                                                                                                  Aten Design Group is redeveloping and redesigning our Drupal website. We started our engagement with the general site maintenance to address any issues, and after that, we decided that we wanted to take advantage of their skillset and expertise, so we started with additional projects with their team.

For the design, we wanted to work with what we already had because we like it, but they’ve made suggestions around accessibility matters and navigation improvements, which have been helpful. 

In terms of the development, they first did a complete UX and PURE review of the platform to look at the different problems we had, and consequently, they started enhancing the site. Some features include a complete main navigation bar redesign and account accessibility components, significantly impacting our website.

We’re currently working on changing their scope of work for next year, which will include maintenance and continued projects.

What is the team composition?

We’ve been working with six members of their team, including a project manager.

How did you come to work with Aten Design Group?

We were referred to them by a company that knew about our work. After contacting different providers, we decided on Aten Design Group because they seemed like the best fit for us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $100,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

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

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

We’ve made significant improvements on our site based on heat mapping recordings, bounce rates, and Google Analytics. Overall, we’re 100% satisfied with their work, they’ve exceeded our expectations, and we enjoy working with them so much!

How did Aten Design Group perform from a project management standpoint?

The project manager that they assigned to us is amazing and the reason that we’ve initiated more work with them. We’re a small company, so having the ability to outsource project management is great for us. In terms of communication, we use Basecamp, and we also have constant check-in and administration calls.

What did you find most impressive about them? 

Their specialization in Drupal is vital for us. Still, their expertise and project management approach are also unique — they’ve brought an impressive team who can help us with any particular aspect of the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Be sure of what you’re looking for and the specifics you have in mind. Also, ensure that you have a conversation with them to tell if they’re the best fit for you.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the website manager for a community college.

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design?

We needed to rebuild our website from the ground up along with its hosting, CMS, SEO strategy, accessibility compliance, analytics tracking, and design. In order to create a better, more informative website that could help our prospective students, we hired Aten Design.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with a website audit to understand where users were going, how they were interacting with the site, and if there was anything wrong or missing. Aten Design got access to all of the reviews and analytics, and we also provided them with the branding material and media for the design.

The team went on to create new functionalities for our website, one of which could allow us to link directly to any program that we’re promoting in our college catalog. A lot of development time was spent making sure that that was in place. 

Aten Design also created a document resource library within the website that could store and sort files by size. They used Drupal as our CMS and made sure that we were compliant in terms of accessibility. 

What is the team composition?

The number of people that work with us depends on what bucket of the project we’re focusing on. We bring in more people as needed. 

We initially interacted with the salesperson and then got assigned a project manager and around three engineers. As we went, we ended with a rotating stable of 10 people. 

How did you come to work with Aten Design?

We have some strict rules in higher education, so we went out to RFP. We received over 25–30 responses before following through with the interview process. In the end, we awarded that contract to Aten Design because they naturally rose to the top with their impressive work approach and portfolio.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We formally started around June 2020 and we’re still working with the team.

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

We don’t use any traditional KPIs; we’re simply looking into making an improved version of our previous website. From what we’ve seen, the current website has an improved experience over the last in terms of speed, structure, and authoring environment. The overall design of the website is just so much better.

The integration that allows us to connect with the catalog saves us costs as we’re now able to promote the most current degrees and programs. That Aten Design used an open-source CMS is also a big deal since it allows us to develop and iterate more in the future.

How did Aten Design perform from a project management standpoint?

Aten Design is top-notch in terms of project management. They are a terrific, dedicated team that is super responsive and quick to find answers. We meet at least twice a week and their performance merits nothing but great marks on my end.

We use Slack, Jira, and another project management software that we use within the college.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What’s most impressive about them is their ability to collaborate and make sure that we’re getting the exact custom solution that we need. Whenever we have to go back to the drawing board, Aten Design is a good sport about it. They’re very professional and knowledgeable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There's always something that they can be better at, but so far, nothing stands out.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you truly understand what you want to get at the end of the project. Be very clear at the beginning because it helps everybody when you are firm about what you want. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of the Johnson O’ Connor Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization that does aptitude testing.

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design Group?

We needed to replace our old bar graph program, which is where we put all of the results of each person’s aptitude test. The program would generate printouts of the results, as well as a report that provides detailed information.

Additionally, we were also using separate programs for accounting and scheduling, so we needed a platform that would encapsulate all these tasks, including accounting and research.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Aten Design Group provided us with custom software development to build and design a cloud-based program using the Drupal platform. They’re still working on the project, but essentially, we’re looking to move into a maintenance contract with them to manage bugs.

What is the team composition?

We’ve been working with them for two years now, so there have been some staff departures. Currently, we have a project manager, a backend programmer, and a frontend programmer. 

How did you come to work with Aten Design Group?

One of my colleagues recommended Aten Design Group to us, after they’ve heard of them. We were getting bids from a number of different companies, but some of them thought our project was too small, so they declined to submit a bid. The great thing about Aten Design is they focus on working with nonprofits, so that made them very attractive to us.

Furthermore, when we talked to them about what we needed, they already understood the challenges of the project from the outset.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in November 2018.

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

We work together on developing a product that can mediate better results, and provide a more sophisticated analysis to the client — so they were getting more than just the sum of its parts. Our old program didn’t provide an adequate summation of what our clients were hearing, but we’ve had a few people say that they don’t even need a face-to-face meeting anymore, because this new program is clearer and more efficient.

How did Aten Design Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve had two different project managers with two different styles, and we've enjoy working with both. The current project manager is very communicative. We meet once a week, and then she’ll send updates about what we talked about on our calls. The program did take longer to develop than we initially thought, but it wasn’t their fault once they realized how complex the report part of the program was — so they added more time to the project.

Regardless of that, we’ve been happy with how they’ve been handling the project, and they’ve been very clear about any changes that had to be made. 

We mainly use Slack and email to communicate, and JIRA to manage the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed by how they go above and beyond to overachieve our expectations.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t really say anything about it, because despite the project being more complex to develop, it wasn’t their fault. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would say to communicate every step of the way. Weekly meetings really help because they make sure that what you say, is what they will hear.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

History Colorado is partially a nonprofit organization and partially under the State of Colorado, under the Department of Education. Traditionally, if you wanted to describe it, it's like the Historical Society. We have museums and sites across Colorado, as well as a public research center. 

We also have a state preservation fund that grants Colorado communities grants for preserving the properties and history — we're a very large and sophisticated organization. I’m the communications strategy manager and I'm a part of the marketing communications team.

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design Group?

Before we started working with Aten, we had a part-time employee on our team that managed our websites. He managed the updates, the modules, and everything that was needed, but he decided to retire. Since we are a nonprofit, we couldn't really afford to have a full-time employee at the time. Our previous employee was close to his retirement, so he just worked part-time. 

Aten came in and really helped us work with our budget to keep our websites going, helped us with the module updates, the security updates, and just make sure the website doesn't crash. From there, as we got more comfortable with our budget, it evolved into improving the user experience on our website. We had a huge wish list that we wanted to work on and later on, we also received a grant that we could use for the website — that's how it evolved and we are continuing to work with them in the future.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their developer works on the module updates and the security updates, which happens monthly. Once a week, we have a meeting with their project manager to go through all of these updates that are going on and through our wish list. One of the things that we changed in our website was really reorganizing the web pages, so people can easily find their tickets to the museum and what they were looking for.

Another thing is that we worked on the user experience. We wanted to include more slides in our homepage heroes, but they advised that we couldn’t do that because of accessibility issues. In that way, they're very much keen on who our audience is, so they can advise us on that stuff.

In addition, we worked on changing the templates on our landing pages. We had many different templates depending on our needs, so we changed those and made it easier for our customers to find the tickets and to sign up for events. People don't spend a lot of time looking for things on our website which frustrates them. We just worked hard on improving the user experience design on our website, and we still have a lot of work to do with that.

What is the team composition?

I directly work with Janice Camacho (Digital Project Manager). I also know they have a developer — I think her name is Jennifer, but I never really worked with her. She's the one that works on the updates on our websites.

How did you come to work with Aten Design Group?

A few years ago, this was before I started, our organization wanted to change the website that we used. Since we are under the State of Colorado, whenever a project is over $25,000, we have to put it out for tender to the public, and the companies have to apply for it. The reason we picked Aten was because they had the best proposal.

They really knew what we needed and wanted, and they actually listened to our needs —  we also really liked the people that work there. It was very easy to communicate with them.

How much have you invested with them?

Our fiscal year just ended end of June. We spent around $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I personally have been on this team for a year and a half. I started working with Aten in September 2020, and the partnership is still ongoing.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the associate creative director at Indivisible Project, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit committed to building progressive political infrastructure across the country. We also fight for progressive legislation and help elect progressive candidates. I oversee our web design and video programs. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design Group?

Prior to our engagement with Aten, we’d gone through a complete website redesign process in 2018, and we were unhappy with our previous vendor. We hoped that the website redesign would lead to a long-term partnership with them, but the relaunch was rocky, just like the support they provided. When we engaged Aten, we wanted to put out the fires that we were burning with the previous vendor. Specifically, we wanted to redesign our homepage, where we had a lot of problems. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our first project was the homepage redesign task. In the beginning, Aten and our team had a kickoff meeting and a month-long discovery process to get to know each other. They studied the site since the project was a redesign of an existing platform. We also kept our original branding, so they needed to learn about our organization and brand. After the discovery process, they researched how people were using our homepage versus how we wanted them to use it in the future. On top of that, we did a codebase walkthrough with their development team. 

Once that was done, we explored our design options. They proposed ways to implement our branding on the homepage, which led to the creation of wireframes and design direction. At this stage, we figured out the visual hierarchy and navigation patterns of the website. Once the design was approved, they implemented it on Drupal. Their resources handled all configurations and frontend development tasks until we launched the homepage in January 2020. 

Since then, we’ve turned the agreement into an ongoing support contract, which covers all the IT support needs of Indivisible. We’ve redesigned other parts of the website, such as the page that’s focused on a specific segment of our audience. We’ve also redesigned a resource library for that key demographic. On top of that, their team has built a completely separate website for one of our campaigns. Currently, we’re migrating to the latest version of Drupal, which also involves redesigning many parts of the website. 

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact is our project manager, who facilitates our communications. Other developers and staff come in based on the needs of the project. We’ve also interfaced with their director of accounts, VP of design, and other full-stack developers. 

How did you come to work with Aten Design Group?

One of my colleagues went to a Drupal conference where Aten gave a great presentation on website accessibility, which was important to us. They also had a dedicated accessibility expert on staff. Overall, they had a combined internal knowledge of accessibility and Drupal expertise, and we hoped to find those things in our long-term support partner. As a result, we hired them. 

How much have you invested with them?

The first homepage project cost $33,000. Since then, our total investment has been around $200,000, including the work that isn’t completed yet but is on the books. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2019, and the engagement is ongoing. 

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

The best example of Aten’s work success is the redesign of our resource library. After the redesign of that page, we’ve seen a 92% increase in the number of new users. Our team has also seen a 99% increase in sessions per user on that page. That’s important because we want our end users to keep coming back to that page and move around the website. 

For context, our traffic goes up and down throughout the year depending on where we are in the election cycle. As such, the increase in new users and sessions per user truly shows us the quality of the work that Aten has put into redesigning the page. It also proves that the user research we’ve conducted has been paying off, and we’re seeing great numbers. 

How did Aten Design Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is one of Aten’s best strengths. We have a single project manager at any given point in time, and we’re in constant contact with him. We conduct weekly stand-ups to go over our project goals and general support requests. 

In addition to the weekly stand-ups, we also do project management-related tasks through Basecamp. We use Slack for more casual conversations or urgent discussions. Overall, we’ve had a bad experience with our previous provider, so we’re truly happy that we’ve found Aten. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

To be brutally honest about ourselves, we’re not an easy client. We’re an organization that responds to the news cycle, so we have to move quickly. With that in mind, Aten Design is incredibly flexible when we have an urgent need that comes up in the middle of a big project. They can adjust with us when we need to shift and prioritize things based on what’s coming down our pipeline. 

Aten’s communication and project management skills truly factor into this. We’re always on the same page about our priorities and shifting needs, and we can have honest conversations about what’s possible and what’s not. In other words, we’re always clear-eyed on what we need to do and how we can do it. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We haven’t taken advantage of their other services. For context, we’ve recently realized that they also provide email marketing and SEO services. 

These aren’t exactly areas for improvement. Rather, these are things that I wish we’ve taken more advantage of while working with them. We just haven’t had the chance to do it. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Aten is communicative, so don’t be afraid to tell them if you need something. On top of that, they’re amazing at project management, user interviews, and UX design work, but they can’t do these things out of anywhere. As a result, you must provide them the user information they need and facilitate conversations that give them deeper insight into your goals and your user base. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at Nebraska Wesleyan University, a small university here in Lincoln, Nebraska. We have about 2,000 students on campus. In our department, we’re about seven people — we have copywriters, content managers, and so on. I’m a web developer, so I do a lot of programming for the website.

What challenge were you trying to address with Aten Design Group?

We initially hired another company to take our site to the next level, make it mobile-friendly, and update the Drupal version running for the CMS. We spent a lot of money with them, and they didn’t even come close to finishing. They basically destroyed our website. We dropped them, and Aten Design took over the development of our site.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our site was in Drupal 7. The other company had moved us over to Drupal 8 in their own type of platform, which wasn’t working out because we weren’t using it. The site had a lot of the codebase in there and was about two-thirds done. Aten Design striped out the old modules and helped us with our theme to make it mobile-friendly. They also did an accessibility audit, in which they went through our site and noted down several areas where we could use accessibility improvements. Then, they did custom module work to help with accessibility.

After that, we went live with the site, and we’ve been using the same code base ever since.

What is the team composition?

I primarily worked with James (Web Developer), and it was very helpful to work with one technical person. We didn’t have to re-explain everything; he knew our site inside out, so it was like having another employee for our company. Additionally, we had an account representative.

How did you come to work with Aten Design Group?

I ran into Aten Design at DrupalCon. The previous company had about 60 employees. Aten Design had 20 people or so, which allowed us to work with one developer and not get passed around the company. They were really personable, and they were in Colorado, which is a neighboring state. We liked that we could have a more personalized working relationship due to the size of their company.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $35,000 in total — $27,000 on the website theme and another $8,000 on the accessibility audit.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in July 2016, and we finished the Drupal migration in March 2017.

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

We analyzed our Google Analytics for our accessibility, but a lot of the feedback was just generalized comments from faculty, staff, and students. Once we went live, we had minimal issues, so we considered it a success.

How did Aten Design Group perform from a project management standpoint?

The previous company spent so much time on account management. I think two-thirds of our budget went there. However, Aten Design seemed much more focused on management. They gave us a deadline for the project and hit it with ease. They connected us with the developer, and we went over the issues with him. He continued and took on the project. Overall, they were very efficient and personalized.

We had meetings twice a week and used Slack and Basecamp to communicate back and forth. We also had phone and Skype meetings to answer questions and discuss what had to be done and what had been done so far.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The fact that they were a small company was probably the number one reason why we chose them. Since we’re not a big university, we don’t have a huge budget. Working with Aten Design allowed us to feel more important. We felt like we were a decent-sized project for them. They got the job done and were very personable.

Also, when we dropped the other company, they had to pick up where they left off and finish the site, so they did a tremendous amount of work. However, the money they charged us was nothing compared to the previous company.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Since then, we’ve had several technical projects with Aten Design. We haven’t redesigned our website yet. However, we talk to James about different issues, and we’ve run 2–3 times where he’s not familiar with the software or up to speed with the platform. Therefore, the only thing I’d like to see is more of a knowledge base on their end so they can help us out more.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have a working plan in place and that everything is nailed down and in writing. You need to give them exactly what they’re looking for so they know what to implement. In that sense, they did pretty well for us, got everything set up, and met our goals.