Beardo Group

Please describe your company and your position there.

Owner of a product design and engineering firm that works with companies of many sizes - from start-ups and entrepreneurs to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and multinationals.

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

Creation of a media-rich website, that is structured for expansion.

How did you select Beardo Group and what were the deciding factors?

Requested bids from multiple companies. Beardo was very responsive through the process, and provided a proposal that was a good balance between design intensity and pricing.

We recognize and prefer smaller companies for design services - instead of formulaic or automated so-called-design companies where the founders have long gone, or are not involved, and work is essentially shuffled to the first available resource. Beardo was a pleasure to work with!

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

https://Product-Design-Experts.com/ Involving:

1. Designing of a number of page templates.
2. Visual brand language advice and execution, including: revamp of logo, color palette, fonts and other design considerations
3. Creation of video media
4. Modifications of image media
5. Interactive & active design elements
6. SEO considerations
7. Contact-Us form, with data-checks
8. Website hosting advice
9. Licensed website tools (particularly useful!)
10. Website launch and initial administration

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

Owner, plus a number of specialists

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

Deliverable can be seen here: https://Product-Design-Experts.com/

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

Periodic live consultations and key stage-gates, plus additional meeting as required or requested by us/client. Good use of cloud technology to facilitate communications (teleconf, shared drives)

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

Again, we recognize and prefer smaller companies for design services - instead of formulaic or automated so-called-design companies where the founders have long gone, or are not involved, and work is essentially shuffled to the first available resource. Beardo was a pleasure to work with!

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

Any possibility to reduce timelines (shorter duration) would always help.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My company is called Aardvark Antiques, and we sell antiques such as art and jewelry both locally and across the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with Beardo?

Our goal was to create an e-commerce site for my company.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The basic requirements for the site were that people could purchase off of it, while also being able to navigate product photographs and descriptions easily. The site is built on WordPress, and they provided everything from the ground up, including the front- and backend coding and design.

What is the team composition?

I believe there were about 2–3 people working on the project, but I dealt primarily with one member of their team in order to centralize communication.

How did you come to work with Beardo?

I did some research online for the best web designers in Atlanta, and Beardo came highly recommended by others in the industry.

How much have you invested with them?

They quoted us at $18,500, but they ended up coming in even lower than that, so we got a bit of a discount in the end.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from around November 2017–January 2018.

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

Everybody who uses the site provides really excellent feedback about how nice it looks and how easy it is to use. Beardo provided a lot of ideas on their end about how to improve the site and make it more user friendly which ended up benefitting the final product quite a bit.

How did Beardo perform from a project management standpoint?

They did an excellent job of project management as well, communicating frequently through both email and phone calls to make sure we always stayed on top of the milestones and deadlines for the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team was super easy to work with throughout the whole process. They always made a point of explaining the technological aspects of the job to me in ways that I understood, which I really appreciated. They are just really great folks.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I can think of that they should do differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I don’t think you can do better for your money anywhere, so don’t hesitate to work with them!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a marketing and PR company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Beardo?

I hired them to build our main website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We first held a discovery call with them, where we discussed our goals for the website. They came back with a suggested framework, from which they built a brand new WordPress website. I know they utilized technologies like JavaScript and CSS.

They provide the hosting for and also manage our site. We’ve relied on them for the construction of other websites, as well. I believe they’ve built four websites for us.

What is the team composition?

I interface primarily with two people, but I suspect that there is a bigger team working on the projects as well.

How did you come to work with Beardo?

They were a referral from a creative director that I know. She recommended Beardo when I communicated my need for a new site.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May of 2017, and we have an ongoing partnership.

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

We’ve received a multitude of compliments on our websites, especially our main platform. It’s not only very functional and communicative, but it’s also very fun to engage with. It’s even won a number of awards. Beardo really went over and above with their work.

How did Beardo perform from a project management standpoint?

Beardo does a very good job. They’ve been able to meet our strict deadlines, and always within budget.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team is made up of really friendly people who are extremely easy to work with, which is a rare quality with web development teams. They also think outside of the box to deliver a product that’s better than anything I’d ever envisioned. I also appreciate that on top of being creative, they have the coding skills to materialize those sophisticated designs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Even though we’ve been working with them since 2017, I’ve never met any of them in person. It’d be nice to meet them in person. Additionally, they could probably win more projects if they engaged their existing customers more often since they’re such an effective and easy-going team.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO at Darling Imports. We work in the wholesale jewelry industry.

What challenge were you trying to address with Beardo?

The most important thing was our presence on the internet. Secondly, we needed to introduce e-commerce.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Beardo developed our WordPress website. We had a couple of face-to-face meetings at the beginning of the process, during which we went over big picture stuff, like who we were and what we wanted to do. We also went through a bit of the logistics of how much material we had and how we were going to organize it. That lasted for about a month. Then, we went through a couple of months of planning how we were going to situate everything and how functions were going to happen. 

Beardo coded for about 2–3 months. We made tweaks throughout that process. We launched a bit later than we intended to, but I think that was because of some changes we made in the last third of the project. We knew a delay would occur. 

Now, they’re still doing updates to our servers. They also host for us.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work with two people from Beardo, but we’ve interacted with four in total. This includes programmers. We’ve also worked with a photographer who isn’t part of Beardo but was recommended by them. 

How did you come to work with Beardo?

I looked through the websites of several developer companies in Atlanta and narrowed it down to 2–3 options. They quoted very high prices. I called another website company, and they recommended Beardo, a former contractor of theirs. Beardo was available to take on our project, and we ultimately chose them because they seemed very down-to-earth and excited about the project. Their quote was also what I considered much more within the realm of reason.

How much have you invested with them?

My company has spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work together began in February 2018, and it’s ongoing.

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

We’re only wholesale, so we don’t have any metrics to compare to. However, we had projected 100 orders in the first year, and we ended up with 340. We were also hoping for 300–400 subscribers to the website, or people who’d logged on and created a unique ID; last time I checked, we had around 600 subscribers.

How did Beardo perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate almost exclusively via email. I’d like more in-person conversations, especially with some changes we have coming up. That seems to be a hurdle that we’re going to have to agree to. I like meeting in-person to talk about things, but I think Beardo has moved away from Georgia. We’ll try to arrange something.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They seem level-headed about everything that’s going on. They never seem stressed about what we ask them to do; the team has a good demeanor.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’d like the website to do more, but I’m not a programmer and don’t know what the language that Beardo programs in is capable of. For instance, I’d like the purchasing process and display to be a bit more streamlined. I don’t know if that’s going to push me to somebody else or if Beardo can take on that challenge. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Beardo does a great job and listens well. They will take care of a lot of stuff for you. You should have some idea of what you want. Also, no matter who you work with, add 33% to whatever you believe your budget is. That’s just going to happen.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the owner of an online marketplace for beekeeping supplies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Beardo?

Our website would break down when there were over 50 people on the site or if over 30 people were placing orders. We were looking for a partner to help resolve this issue.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Beardo redesigned our WordPress website. At first, they just improved the website to allow for more than 100 people at a time, but once we reached the offseason we completely overhauled it. Their team was responsible for bringing in a whole new architecture and design. Their team continues to help with our server speed and some updates. They also help out with our WooCommerce site.

What is the team composition?

We worked mainly with two members of the Beardo team, Nathan (Partner & Business Development, Beardo) and Josh (Partner & Creative Director, Beardo).

How did you come to work with Beardo?

I knew other web designers who utilized Beardo for out of house services and decided to work with them

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested about $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement began in 2017.

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

We have recieved 100% positive feedback from users on the design of the site. Our page views in January 2019 were at 4,064 and yesterday was 6,705. Our bounce rate fell by 8.7%, falling as low as 39%. Additionally, pages per user and session duration both increased.

How did Beardo perform from a project management standpoint?

Beardo delivers projects on time, if not early. This last project they were three weeks early. I rarely have to follow up because everything is completed on time. Our teams typically communicate over the phone or email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The entire team at Beardo is rock solid.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, everything has been great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Understand what you want to get out of your website. They can’t read your mind, so it’s best if you can provide them with as much detail as possible. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of human resources at a staffing company that specializes in the apartment industry.

What challenge were you trying to address with Beardo?

We had two challenges: we constantly need new applicants and our clients need to easily access information about us and who we are. The website also facilitates the submission of work orders. Our website was out of date.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on a web design project to rebuild and refresh our website. Working from scratch, their team built easy ways to submit applications and use site functionalities. The site was constructed with WordPress.

What is the team composition?

We worked closely with Josh (President, Beardo) and one other Beardo staff member.

How did you come to work with Beardo?

I searched for web developers and designers on Google. When I came across their website, it caught my attention the most.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested less than $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in April 2019 and wrapped up in August 2019.

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

Everyone has been very impressed with our website. We’re getting ten times the traffic we were getting prior to the engagement. We’ve been receiving many more applications and online work orders. They completed the project before the deadline.

How did Beardo perform from a project management standpoint?

Josh was very easy to work with. They did an amazing job and were always on top of things. They emailed me and followed if they were waiting for something on my end. They were very timely and would get back to me within the business day.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their communication was their most impressive trait. They were willing to explain information to me even though I’m not technically-minded. They even recorded videos on how to make changes to the site for me to use. Just great communication and customer service.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you are planning on writing your own content, make sure to get a head start on that because it held back the project we had. You should have your content ready so the timeline doesn’t get messed up.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the owner of Swell Studios, a marketing agency.

What challenge were you trying to address with Beardo?

I was looking for a web developer for a third party client.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Beardo developed and designed a WordPress website for my client. The team worked in Elementor to build the platform and integrated a video player. It was a pretty straight forward informational site, which they optimized for mobile and tablets. They continue to provide support and maintenance for the website.

What is the team composition?

I worked with two members of the Beardo team.

How did you come to work with Beardo?

I searched for web developers on the internet, found Beardo, and filled out their form online. They responded immediately and were able to give me a quote right off the bat. After looking at their past work, I knew they were going to deliver and felt like they were a good match. 

How much have you invested with them?

I have invested $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with Beardo in October 2019. While they have completed work on the site, we haven’t launched it yet. 

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

Our clients love the site, they’re super impressed. It has to go through a corporate process before we can launch it, but everyone loves the way it looks and how fast we got it done. The site works great on mobile and tablet and loads quickly. It sets them apart from any competitors.

How did Beardo perform from a project management standpoint?

Our teams communicated via email and phone. Anytime we had questions or concerns, they were easy to get ahold of. We were able to look at the site while it was in development so changes were easy to make. 

It was a seamless process. They have a well thought out form that we used to provide them with information and content, which took a lot of stress away from our end.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Beardo made the project easy, which took a weight off my shoulders. They were able to foresee issues or bounce ideas off of me. Their suggestions were always great and we implemented some of their ideas. Beardo has a team of technical experts. It was a really collaborative process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, it was a really great process and experience. They did a good job and they were fast.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do your due diligence and ask questions. They’re a really personable group of people to work with and are experts in what you do. Get to know them and listen to their suggestions.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the principal owner of a clinical consulting company. There are two of us in the company. We work with health organizations around the country when they don’t have a clinical team or need somebody with particular expertise to come in and help create new operations.

What challenge were you trying to address with Beardo?

I don’t have a marketing background, and we needed help getting some marketing pieces together. In the past, we haven’t gotten a lot of clients from the website, so we wanted to start driving clients to the website using certain keywords. We also wanted to have a clean site for existing clients, as this proves credibility.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I described what I wanted in non-technical terms and showed them other sites we thought looked good. We went back and forth, and Beardo showed us different things they could do. They even showed us certain things that we liked better than what we’d thought we’d wanted, so that was helpful. 

What is the team composition?

I only talked to two people. I don’t know if there were any developers or other team members who weren’t client-facing.

How did you come to work with Beardo?

I looked at their previous work. I really liked their site and the other sites they’d done. They’d worked with some big clients, so I checked to see if they were within our price range. They definitely weren’t the cheapest, but they weren’t the most expensive, either. For the quality of their work, I thought they were worth spending money on. 

How much have you invested with them?

I believe we spent just over $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Beardo from November–December 2019.

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

The other owner of the company was really happy with Beardo’s work because it’s exactly what we wanted. The person who does some of our collateral marketing liked it as well. 

How did Beardo perform from a project management standpoint?

Beardo was very responsive and organized. We deal with a lot of service providers who aren’t as responsive as they were. We primarily communicated via email. If they didn’t understand something I’d described to them, we spoke over the phone to clarify. Then, they quickly understood and were able to execute on it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Beardo’s customer service was impressive. Even though I described what we wanted in non-technical terms, Beardo understood. It was clear that they’ve worked with a lot of other people who don’t understand web design. They listened to what we wanted and delivered on what we were visualizing. Their whole team was good about doing that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so. They gave us a quality product at a good price. I think our site looks a lot more updated than those of our competitors. Overall, they were a really good match for what we were looking for.

Any advice for potential customers?

Clients need to understand their content. If you tell Beardo what you want to say, they’re going to figure out a way to display that. However, if you don’t know your own content, that’s hard for anybody to deliver on. They will be able to take your content and run with it. Also, one of the things that I thought was helpful was showing them examples of sites we liked and disliked. That way, they got an idea of what we imagined the end product to look like.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the director of marketing with BC technical. We are a medical imaging service provider to hospitals and imaging centers.

What challenge were you trying to address with Beardo?

We went through a website re-do several years back with a different company, and our corresponding SEO was not working. The website wasn’t up to par with what we needed. So, we reached out Beardo, who had done some graphics work with us in the past. We wanted something very clickable and more interactive.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The website design was completely rebuilt. On the back end, they added proper tags and titles and all that kind of stuff. We added a lot more contact forms on all the web pages, and a lot more images on the home screen. They did a lot of our graphics work for brochures, tradeshows, and banners. They also worked on SEO.

What is the team dynamic?

My two main contacts are Nathan and Josh – they’re both very great to work with. Nathan was always super-fast in getting back to me any time I have a question through email. He’s really good at explaining what they’re doing step by step, especially with the SEO piece, which can be a little confusing. He breaks it down for me which is great. Josh has been great as well. He’s done a lot of our tradeshow banners and brochures. They’re easy to work with. I can come to them with a concept or small idea that we want to do, and they’re good at fleshing that out and making suggestions.

How did you come to work with Beardo?

I knew some of their employees before they started Beardo. I’ve worked with them on other projects in the past with different companies.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing relationship with them.

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

SEO can take a while to pay off, sometimes three to six months to start seeing some changes. But after Beardo’s work, almost immediately we started seeing positive changes on a lot of our targeted search terms. In some cases, we weren’t popping up on the front page of Google, and now we are first page on many of our targeted terms. We even rank in the top 5 for some terms.

They reorganized our menu structure, which was a huge help for our users.  If something was looking for something on our site, we didn’t want them to have to click more than twice to find that page.

How did Beardo perform from a project management standpoint?

Very well – Nathan is always very quick to respond. If there was ever something that was going to be a delay he was good about communicating that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Communication is great. They were really good at breaking things down and taking you step by step. We could come to them with a problem, and they’d have great suggestions. They brought up ideas that we didn’t realize we needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the vice president of client development at RightPath Resources, a leadership and talent development company that delivers innovative web-based tools for selection, development, and retention. We specialize primarily in solutions for team building and leadership development to help individuals better understand themselves and others. Our processes start with externally validated behavioral profile assessments and a career development program tool. This tool also includes a leadership 360 that measures emotional intelligence.

What challenge were you trying to address with Beardo?

Our website is primarily a promotional and informational website. Our main focus was to redesign and implement a new, visually appealing site featuring all of our solutions and tools. We were also seeking consistency within the site so users could easily navigate between solutions.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Beardo started working with the prospect client facing website completely from scratch. They didn’t work with the online tools and backend, but they did develop the frontend using WordPress and helped with image selection. RightPath provided the actual content as far as verbiage goes. SEO was a consideration, and I plan on reaching out to Beardo again to help us enhance that. They did a fantastic job.

What is the team dynamic?

We presented them with some of our ideas, and then they incorporated those into 2-3 prototypes for us. They provided us with wireframes and sketches throughout and then dived headfirst into the website design.

How did you come to work with Beardo?

We went into the market looking for a developer, and Beardo was recommended to us by one of the bigger development firms in Atlanta. We chose them due to their customer service and price competitiveness.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from April 2016-November 2016.

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

We have had some very positive feedback regarding the look, design, and feel of the website. It provides a much more friendly and interactive experience for users.

How did Beardo perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything from their customer service, to follow-up, and to the fact that they were always there if we had questions was fantastic. They were also good at meeting deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I most appreciate their customer service in regards to response time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I would highly recommend them.