Blue Archer

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the membership and communications director for the International Society for Bipolar Disorders. We edit research to make it accessible for clinicians, caseworkers, social works, and other frontline support for patients with bipolar disorder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Blue Archer?

Our old website was holding us back because it was so outdated we couldn’t make all the changes we needed to. We’re a membership organization, so we wanted better control over which elements of the site are members-only. We hired Blue Archer to design a new site for us and create a new database that would integrate with it.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our database is hosted by a service called Neon, and Blue Archer partnered with them directly to ensure seamless integration with our new website. They also supplemented our staff in providing content for the new site.

In the initial phase of site development, we discussed marketing strategy in order to narrow down our target audiences and ensure that our site used language suited to those user groups. We also remapped the site in order to reorganize our content so it was more functional and user-friendly. Once that was ready, they walked us through a demo version of the site software and began building the site. They used an open code framework, where they developed custom features that worked for our site’s specific needs, rather than us having to adapt any premade plugins. After the site was ready, we received two rounds of training before it went live.

What is the team composition?

We worked with our project manager, one of the owners, the marketing manager, and a support specialist.

How did you come to work with Blue Archer?

We sent out about a dozen requests for proposals and narrowed the results down to our top three, all of whom we met with in depth. Some of the other groups wanted to adapt us to pre-built solutions, but Blue Archer stood out because they listened carefully to what our organizational needs were and took note of the perceived challenges we wanted to address.

How much have you invested with them?

The initial build and launch of the site cost around $16,000. Hosting and maintenance cost less than $100 a month. They have also added new features, which in total have cost around $5,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2016 and they provide ongoing maintenance and feature development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our number of unique visitors has increased 400% since launching the new site. It’s helped us expand our reach immensely because we’re able to update the content and be more relevant in search results. The new site’s also been very dependable from a technical standpoint. We haven’t had a problem yet, even with the integrations we’ve done.

How did Blue Archer perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re highly responsive, friendly, and easy to work with. We’ve never proposed a suggestion that they turned down or told us they couldn’t do, and they work at a reasonable cost, which was critical for us as a nonprofit. When we initially took proposals for our site, we’d had a deadline in mind and everyone else told us it wasn’t feasible, but Blue Archer was willing and able to meet it. They’re efficient and on top of deadlines—they even kept us on task.

In terms of day-to-day communication, we keep in touch via email and the occasional phone call, although we met in person three times before they started building the website.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They made a good impression from the start because they were willing to listen and respond directly to our needs. We’ve developed a great working relationship because of that and because they’re so diligent with their work. For example, ever since the site launched, they’ve been incredible about communicating with us regarding site maintenance, whether it’s an SSL certificate update or a change to our SEO keywords.

Since the initial redesign, they’ve also partnered with us to solve other issues. We host a conference every year that’s listed on a separate site, so our users weren’t necessarily seeing images from the event. Blue Archer recognized our problem and built us a new conference page with a slideshow feature so we could make that content accessible to all of our users.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open and honest about all of your project goals, even the ones that aren’t necessarily vital. They have a way of making things happen that we didn’t think was possible. Had we not been totally transparent about what we wanted, we probably wouldn’t have been as happy with our results, because some of the features we wanted were dependent upon each other.