The Brick Factory

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the general manager of the American Pops Orchestra. We’re a six-year-old, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in Washington, DC. We focus on reimagining popular American music and presenting approachable concerts for audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

We do a lot of concerts on PBS nationally, mini outreach programs, free children’s touring, and collegiate vocal competitions to find the next generation of artists and give them an entry into the world of music.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Brick Factory?

We started to reach a national audience through our programming on PBS. Our programming is aired all through the US. Still, our past primary audience was in the DC, Maryland, Virginia, and New York area, so we needed help expanding our audience to people across the country that might see us on PBS or catch one of our programs. We wanted to find a way to keep them engaged and help them connect that what they’re seeing on TV is the American Pops Orchestra. Basically, we needed to find a way to connect with these audiences beyond what they see on TV one time so that they’ll check out our other programs and continue to watch our upcoming presentations.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve had a few different contracts with The Brick Factory and are currently on an hourly contract with them. In the past, we’ve done project-specific contracts regarding our marketing. We’d plan out what we wanted around one of our TV shows. Then, they’d prepare an ad set for us, and we’d decide how much of an ad spend we wanted, how much lead-up time we needed, and how long we wanted to run the ads for.

They’d basically come back to us with an entire marketing plan engaging our organic and paid advertising strategy. They’d critique any organic content that we’d prepared, prepare our paid marketing content, run that, and report back to us. Since we decided on our goals, The Brick Factory has become a part of our marketing strategy. They help us along the way, even if we decide to change our plans.

Initially, our goal was to gain more Instagram followers, but we also saw that we had a ton of Facebook interaction and wanted to include that as well, so we added it to the project. They came back with a strategy with the different levels of ad spend and helped us decide what would be best for our organization depending on our budget and how well the other ads did. Overall, they’ve collaborated with us on our social media and social marketing strategy.

We’ve primarily done Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads. The Brick Factory has also helped with keywords on our website, the email content for our audiences, and direct marketing ideas. We’ve reached out directly to organizations we thought would be interested in some of our other programs. Meanwhile, they’ve given us advice on the best ways to do that, the best things to highlight overall, and any marketing strategies that we’re doing. Additionally, they’ve been happy to give their ideas and input while working for the online ads.

The Brick Factory has helped us with SEO as well. They’ve done keyword research and helped us find the best keywords to include with our website. Moreover, they’ve researched what words to include in our ads and done some hashtag keyword work to figure out what will get us the most eyes on our posts for our organic social media.

What is the team composition?

We’ve primarily worked with Katie (Director of Account Management and Marketing) and Audrey (Digital Strategist). Additionally, I’ve had some brief correspondence with their financial person to ensure the invoices are taken care of and the contracts are all up to date.

How did you come to work with The Brick Factory?

Initially, my boss and the organization's founder wanted to transition to a new social media contracting team to help us out. He researched different organizations in the DC or the DMV area and found a few. Then, he asked them for quotes and proposals.

We liked The Brick Factory’s proposal — we liked what they had to offer and their ideas after just looking at our social media. We did a one-month trial on one specific show to see how it would work out. Then, we continued to expand our contract, and it went so well that we decided to move to an hourly contract to have them fully on board with what we do.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve collectively spent about $25,000. They covered some of our ad spend in the beginning, and we did a reimbursement for that. Now, we’ve transitioned to covering our ad spend and paying just for their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in July 2021, and our relationship is ongoing.

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

Working with them has been great because they send us the results at the end of the day, and we’ve been delighted with the results we’ve seen. Also, they send regular updates and compare the ads to see how the last one did.

Our primary goal is to gain followers, and we’ve seen our Instagram followers go up a ton over the past month. We gained 500 from a recent ad set and around 400 Facebook likes from a two-week ad set, and we only spent around $1,500 doing both of those. Those are just the recent results that we’ve seen, but The Brick Factory has grown our overall social media engagement.

How did The Brick Factory perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very responsive and excellent at meeting deadlines. If we email them a new idea, we usually hear back that same day, either with their thoughts on it or a commitment to get back to us as soon as possible. They have a quick timeline turnaround with preparing ad sets for our reviews and are always fantastic at giving us reports on how our ad sets are doing. Even if we haven’t asked for them, they keep us in the loop and break it down for us in layman’s terms so we can understand what’s going on.

Overall, they’re receptive and responsive. The team tells us ahead of time exactly what they need and expect in terms of content so we can pass it to them and set them up for success. That way, they don’t have to wait on us for anything.

We typically communicate via email. Sometimes we use shared Google documents just to keep us up to date. Anything they’re keeping us posted on, they send it through email. Also, they have access to our Google and Facebook ad accounts.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Communication is excellent, and their willingness to go above and beyond for any ideas that we may have is outstanding. They prioritize our needs above what might be better for them and give us honest feedback on ad spending. All in all, their communication, receptiveness to our ideas, and honesty have been really important.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’ve been very pleased overall.  We really enjoy working with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Try them out with a starting contract to see if it works. Also, go into it knowing your goals, whether it is building social media interaction or gaining followers. Having a clear idea of what you want out of the relationship before getting started is vital because it can help them to push you towards those goals.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior communications manager of a nonprofit organization serving Japanese and Japanese-American older adults in Southern California.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Brick Factory?

Our organization was undergoing a lot of changes, so we needed someone to revamp our site.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Brick Factory rebuilt our website. They used our existing platform, which was WordPress, and designed an entirely new look for it. 

We asked for a modern interface that was easily navigable for our core audience, so the team reorganized the whole website to be American Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant. They also gave us a few design options to choose from.

We’ve since gone through a minor revamp using the same process. The Brick Factory continues to maintain and improve our site.

What is the team composition?

We primarily work with Katie (Director of Account Management & Marketing), but 2–3 teammates are assigned to the project.

How did you come to work with The Brick Factory?

Our former CEO referred them to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $40,000 on the major revamp. Afterward, our monthly retainer has been $1,500.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in January 2018 and is ongoing.

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

The revamp has gone well. We’re impressed with The Brick Factory’s ability to work remotely with us. Furthermore, they’ve done a great job of ensuring that their work is modern yet navigable and ADA compliant.

Our partnership has been ongoing for four years, and we see a lot of significant benefits to working with them.

How did The Brick Factory perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve done an excellent job of keeping the project on track and working within our budget. If we ask The Brick Factory to deliver earlier than usual, they always accommodate us and adjust the timeline accordingly. We use Basecamp to manage the project.

In terms of communication, they’re always communicative and readily available despite the time zone difference. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Brick Factory produces high-quality work, and we’ve had a great experience with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The timeline hasn’t been as clear-cut recently, and we’ve experienced some minor delays. However, they’ve done a very good job overall.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Set clear expectations — they’re very good at working around a limited budget as long as you communicate that early on.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

African Parks is a non-profit conservation organization that takes on the complete responsibility for the long-term management of national parks in partnership with governments and local communities. I'm the Digital Manager for the organization and am based at the head office in Johannesburg, South Africa.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Brick Factory?

African Parks initially hired The Brick Factory to develop our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Brick Factory developed our website from scratch using Drupal. We provided them with a basic wireframe, and they handled the entire development process and ensured the website was GDPR and SEO compliant. 

Currently, we manage the content, and they handle all of the web development and updates. If we want to develop or make adjustments to the site, we work with The Brick Factory to deploy these changes. 

In addition to the website, The Brick Factory assists us with our Google Ads and from time to time our online campaigns and social media.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact is Katie Fulton (Director of Account Management & Marketing). We also work with Todd (CEO) occasionally when we have a slightly larger project on the go.

How did you come to work with The Brick Factory?

Our CMO used to work with Todd at another company. She brought The Brick Factory to our organization, and it’s been a really successful partnership.      

How much have you invested with them?

The Brick Factory started developing the website in 2016, and it took about six months to complete. A lot of that time was just us writing the content, but they were amazing and guided us through the process very well. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve spent around $30,000 for the whole project, but we have a monthly retainer with them.

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

The Brick Factory has been absolutely fantastic at managing the website. They’ve always been available whenever we need them and always come to the table with fantastic ideas. 

I work with a very small team on a day-to-day basis and so having The Brick Factory to help me maintain and keep the website running smoothly is a great help. The time difference between Africa and the US hasn’t affected our work at all. I would highly recommend them to anyone to anyone who is thinking about using their services.

How did The Brick Factory perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Basecamp to run our projects and make sure everything is updated regularly according to the right timelines and deadlines. This has been really helpful, especially because of the time difference between our teams. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Brick Factory is great with communication and very responsive to any queries or issues we might have. They make us feel supported no matter what, which is the best part of working with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re really wonderful. I don’t have anything negative to say about them, nor any improvement suggestions.

Any advice for potential customers?

My advice would be to have a plan and a budget in mind. The Brick Factory will adjust to your budget and timelines and will provide you with wonderful ideas and support.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a communications manager for IPA (Innovations for Poverty Action) and we’re a research and policy nonprofit. What we do is work with researchers to generate evidence on the effectiveness of programs targeted towards poverty alleviation.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Brick Factory?

We don’t have any in-house web developers or anyone who has more than rudimentary web development experience. We had a relationship with another web agency, but our engagement was ending so I was looking for an agency that can replace them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a monthly retainer with them, so our engagement is not solely for one project — they help us whenever we need web developer support. The things that they usually do are in two buckets. The first is routine maintenance where every quarter they implement security updates for us — we use Drupal as our CMS and Acquia as the hosting provider.

The other one is we’ll send them a one-off request for specific things that someone asks us to do. We usually receive requests from other teams at IPA, and then we’ll try to do it ourselves. If we can't, and we run into something that we don’t have the development expertise to do on our own, we’ll go to The Brick Factory. They’ll give us an estimate, we’ll approve it out of our retainer, and then we’ll go back and forth.

They also provide us with their web design services in addition to the development. One time, we were requested to add several other teams at our organization, and a research initiative section of the main navigation menu on our website. We tried to do it ourselves, but kept running into issues so we asked them to help us design the additional section of the menu.

Now it looks great and it links to all the things that it’s supposed to.

What is the team composition?

I only work directly with two people. Katie (Director of Account Management & Marketing) who is my main point of contact, and Ron (Vice President & Technical Services). Whenever we have anything we need to do on a website, I email Katie and Ron, and they will then assign the tasks to the developers on their team.

It helps us because we don’t have to worry about who to ask. They can just funnel the request to their team, or whoever needs to be working on it.

How did you come to work with The Brick Factory?

I was looking for web development agencies that were based in DC because at the time, before the COVID-19 pandemic, I thought that would make things easier. I just did a Google search and they were one of the agencies that came up on the list. I liked that they had a bunch of case studies and testimonials from other non-profits — their experience working with non-profits was important to us.

I really liked them when I talked to them, I thought they sounded competent, organized, and they gave us a retainer rate that was within our budget — and cheaper than a lot of other agencies that we talked to. They fit everything that we needed, even though it was kind of a cold call, it ended up working pretty well.

How much have you invested with them?

We invest about $15,000 a year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since October 2018 and it’s still ongoing. Every year we renew our retainer with them, and they let us carry over unused hours to the next month, which is also something that’s really important to us.

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

For the qualitative feedback, The Brick Factory is super responsive and they’re great at project management. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why we decided to end our engagement with our previous web development agency. 

The Brick Factory is super proactive. They reach out to us whenever our website needs to be fixed or updated, which we might not be aware of — this is also something the previous agency didn’t do. It’s just been helpful how responsive and organized they are and as I said, they not only fulfill our requests, but they are also active in sending us notices in advance.

Additionally, they’ve been thoughtful about proposing other options whenever a request isn’t possible to accomplish. They would base their options on what they know about our website and branding scheme.

For the quantitative feedback, since we’re a nonprofit, we are always trying to be cognizant of how we spend our money, especially on overhead. We do have a full communications team, but we don’t have the budget to hire a full-time web developer. Therefore, it’s been really great to outsource that role at a fraction of the cost of hiring someone full-time.

We’ve worked with them long enough that they understand our needs and who we are as a brand.

How did The Brick Factory perform from a project management standpoint?

They use Basecamp, which is really helpful in terms of project management and tracking tasks. If I send them a request through there, they’ll respond within a day or two at most. One time, our website was down for a really long time so I sent them an email and they got back to me within five minutes. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed by the fact that they’re just so good at what they do, that I never have to worry. We’ve never had any problems, and they’re able to do everything we ask. Moreover, they’re really helpful in terms of being realistic about the deliverables. For example, whenever they have a bunch of requests from clients, they’ll put them in a queue, and tell us the exact date of when they'll submit the deliverables.

Just the specificity of how they operate and how organized they are, have really been the biggest things out of all the things they’re good at.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’ve never had any complaints about their work. I don’t think they could be any faster than they already are, considering the things that they do for us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would say that since The Brick Factory is so good at project management, that you should also try to be good at managing the project on your end. It helps in terms of the back and forth, and the process will go smoother if you’re organized on your end.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of communications for the US-Japan Council, an educational nonprofit that strengthens US-Japan relations through people-to-people connections. We’re a membership organization, and we also do a lot of networking events, study abroad programs, and exchange programs. 

What challenge were you trying to address with The Brick Factory?

We had been using the same website for 5–6 years. As a result, we wanted to revamp and make it easier for an external audience to understand what our organization does. However, our problem lies in the fact that it was unclear how our audience could get involved with what we could offer. Thus, we wanted to make our message clear and up to standards. Most of all, we wanted to migrate over to WordPress and MailChimp.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Brick Factory’s work revolved around migrating our website over to WordPress. We were using NationBuilder and it was an all-in-one CRM. It also had a website platform and newsletter distribution platform.

The team was also responsible for transferring all our content and designing all of our pages including the home page and navigation tabs. They worked on making it easier for our users to navigate our website, and they also secured our donations platform so that people could confidently share.

They also led the migration of our newsletter distribution system to MailChimp. The migration wrapped up, so The Brick Factory continues to provide maintenance.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Todd (CEO) and Katie (Director of Account Management & Marketing).

How did you come to work with The Brick Factory?

One of our board members worked with The Brick Factory before and recommended them. She said she really enjoyed working with the team. When we met with them, they had a lot of great ideas we hadn’t really considered before. The cost was also a big concern of ours, and we were impressed that they worked with us on a budget to find something that would fit our needs.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $40,000 for the migration, and then we pay them $165 per hour. Sometimes our monthly invoices range from $200–$3,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2019, and we continue to collaborate with them. 

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

Our board has been very impressed with our quarterly traffic metrics. In the 3rd quarter of 2018, we had 19,000 sessions with 12,000 users. After the migration, we've achieved 28,000 sessions with 20,000 users in the third quarter of 2020. Our increase in sessions and users has been largely due to our user-friendly site. 

Additionally, thanks to the team, our platforms have become secured and our external stakeholders now feel more comfortable donating. For our newsletter platform, we had about 4,000 subscribers and that has more than doubled after we transferred to MailChimp.  

How did The Brick Factory perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a great project management process. We’re a very small team, so sometimes I can’t answer their emails right away. Despite that, they ensure that we’re on track and we’re not falling behind our goals in mind. We use Google and email to be on the same page. 

Furthermore, they’ve been incredibly responsive, especially Katie. If she doesn’t have an answer right away, she’ll look into it. Our old developers were incredibly hard to work with, so I highly appreciate The Brick Factory’s quick responses. They let us know that they’re working on things. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their knowledge of the industry standards and how to modernize our outreach and marketing tools has been impressive. They’re very personable and easy to work with. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

To be honest, I don’t have any negative feedback to The Brick Factory. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They can help you to have some end goals in mind. In our initial meeting, we didn’t come in with a great vision of what we wanted with the website and our marketing goals. As a result, it took us a bit longer to start the project. However, if you already have a vision, that can help kickstart the engagement. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the marketing and disability awareness director for Daniel’s Music Foundation, a nonprofit organization that empowers individuals with disabilities through music. We provide music programs and disability awareness programs.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Brick Factory?

We expanded our services online due to COVID-19, so we hired The Brick Factory to help us build awareness for our new virtual community.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped out with SEO and Google Ads. They also created a robust email marketing plan. Then they took a look at our social media plan, managed Facebook and Instagram Ads, and handled influencer marketing.

What is the team composition?

Todd (CEO) was involved early on in the project and he came in to play when we had strategic discussions, but Katie (Director of Account Management & Marketing) was our main point of contact.

How did you come to work with The Brick Factory?

We did a pretty significant agency search. We looked online and asked other organizations in our industry for recommendations. I found The Brick Factory on a list of the top 50 digital marketing agencies. We were looking for a partner with nonprofit experience. They won our business because of their passion and the excitement they brought to the meeting. They dove in and asked really smart questions.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested $12,600 initially.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our initial engagement lasted from October–December 2020, but we’ve decided to keep working with them.

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

Their work has successfully generated leads for our virtual community. They are responsible for driving about 1,000 new names to our existing list through Facebook Ads.

We’re still working with them because it has been a great relationship. They’ve educated us on how to use social channels and how we can maintain communication with leads. By sharing their wisdom with us, they’re preparing us to take over our own marketing efforts eventually.

How did The Brick Factory perform from a project management standpoint?

We identified projects we needed to focus on and purchased a 90- hour block from them. We outlined what we were working on, and they tracked their hours. It was great because it allowed us to be flexible. As we got to know each other, we were able to prioritize what we wanted to work on, and that allowed us to utilize their time in the most effective way.

They used Basecamp, and it is a great tool. It allows everybody to communicate effectively and it organizes all of the information.

Katie is a rockstar. She manages hours well and we’re never surprised by the bill. We meet every week to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

What did you find most impressive about them?

No matter what challenge we put in front of them, they’re able to figure it out. They have a solution-oriented approach and are enthusiastic about solving new problems.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on. They’ve done a really good job.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Bring them up to speed and provide information on your business. The more information you can provide on your audience, the more successful your project will be.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the project director of a non-profit called Us Against Alzheimer’s, and we work towards finding a cure for Alzheimer's.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Brick Factory?

We need to update our old Web site and make it more user-friendly. We want to project our organization in the best way possible and want our site to have great UX.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Brick Factory takes the time to ask us questions about what we want to highlight on our website. Their team interviews us to understand who we are, who our target audience is, and what our current users need from the site. They work with us to find the optimal path to organize content and smooth accessibility. Using this, they are updating our site’s UI/UX. They are also currently collaborating with us to develop another new site.

What is the team composition?

We work mainly with Josh Einbinder (Senior Strategist, The Brick Factory), who is very knowledgeable and guides us to stay on the right track.

How did you come to work with The Brick Factory?

We hired them before I started working with the organization.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in May 2017 and the engagement is ongoing.

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

The site has not yet launched, but internally, our executives are extremely pleased with the work so far. The site is now well-organized, easy to navigate, and highlights our research and sponsors well. It succeeds in conveying information to be digestible and its content is pertinent to caregivers and patients.

How did The Brick Factory perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate through phone, e-mail, and track our progress through basecamp. Their correspondence is excellent, and they always ask questions if something is unclear. Their team is not afraid to reach out for more information and leads parts of our approach. 

The Brick Factory listens to our feedback and creates alternative solutions if something doesn’t work out. They are efficient and immediately respond to delays.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are extremely responsive and are very good at explaining their enhancements. They walk us through every question and help our team stay on task. The Brick Factory uses a very personable approach and is easy to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that they understand your organization and be open with them. They are experts in understanding how users navigate a website and knowing what is important to your organization will help them find the optimal solution for your UI/UX.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the deputy director non-profit organization that focuses on educating the public policymakers and the media about international relations.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Brick Factory?

Our research is very dense and data heavy. We work primarily in the foreign policy space with lengthy research and analysis reports. Our challenge was to present this information in a visually interesting, interactive, and compelling manner.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Brick Factory provides general web development and prepares visualizations of certain reports as requested. For our visualizations, we provide them very in-depth Excel data on international affairs including risk indicators and business implications. They analyze the data to develop multiple graphical options.

After we review and approve the chosen graphics, they will finalize the interactive graph or info chart to be digestible to a broader audience.

What is the team composition?

We primarily work with their CEO, senior strategist, and another strategist.

How did you come to work with The Brick Factory?

I was not responsible for procuring their services, but we've worked with them since the inception of our organization.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2008 and the engagement is ongoing.

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

Our graphics are visually attractive and interactive while still conveying the important information from our spreadsheets. Their work allows us to promote ourselves to a broader audience through social media, our website, and e-mail listserv. Their visualizations really connect us on a personal basis to our audience.

How did The Brick Factory perform from a project management standpoint?

They are always very timely in answering questions, e-mails, and calls. They take our questions very seriously and want to provide the best product for us. They manage a variety of different clients, but they never neglect our needs.

Their team quickly sets clear timelines and budgets. The Brick Factory keeps our projects organized and clearly communicate to us through e-mail and phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to establish clear timelines impresses me and is very helpful because it helps in planning for projects. They are always upfront, and I feel like they are doing their best to look out for the organization. They feel like a part of the team, care about our mission, and want our voice to reach our audience.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust in the team. Get them involved as early as possible. Involve them in your mission and they can really deliver high caliber results.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive director of a new international relations nonprofit.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Brick Factory?

We needed their team’s expertise in website development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Brick Factory developed our WordPress website from scratch. We specifically needed its UX to be straightforward and professional to align with our nonprofit’s mission and vision, so their team took that into consideration during the planning stage.

Apart from the design, The Brick Factory also integrated a few interactive and clickable features into the platform, including a news page that they constantly updated. Upon completing the product, we continued to rely on their team for our site’s maintenance and management.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a team of five resources, including the CEO, developers, and account managers.

How did you come to work with The Brick Factory?

Our CEO already worked with The Brick Factory on a similar project, and they were highly recommended to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our project ran from February–June 2021.

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

The Brick Factory developed a sophisticated website that easily gathered affirmations from users and the members of our advisory board. Apart from its appearance, we were also impressed with the overall quality and responsiveness of the website, which endured a cyber attack that occurred 24 hours after our go-live. Their team generated a high-quality and reliable website based on our requirements and their innovative ideas.

How did The Brick Factory perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly communicated via email and phone calls. The Brick Factory was an accommodating and cooperative team— they were simply on top of their project management game. They helped us overcome technical issues and were always prepared to lay out multiple options for us to choose from. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Brick Factory was a knowledgeable team — they anticipated our needs and generated spot-on solutions to address these.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would’ve appreciated a more complex website, but I’m well aware that The Brick Factory wasn’t in the position to decide on that since they were just implementing what we stated in the project brief.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re an experienced team with valuable insights, so you must have enough room for communication.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Director of Communications at Marketing at the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network (BCAN). BCAN is is a community of patients, caregivers, survivors, advocates, medical and research professionals united in support of people touched by bladder cancer.

For what projects/services did your company hire The Brick Factory, and what were your goals?

We hired the Brick Factory to help us completely redo our web site. They did UX work, graphic design and well as web development work. Our goals were to have a better storytelling experience on our web site, help with SEO, and reach more people touched by bladder cancer.

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

We put out the RFP to nine firms, three of which responded. The deciding factor was the RFP pitch meeting. It was apparent both in the RFP response as well as the video pitch meeting that the Brick Factory truly understood what we were trying to accomplish and could deliver what we were looking for.

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

We wanted to stay on the WordPress platform, so all of our content could be easily migrated. The Brick Factory helped us improve our UX by reorganizing our content and presenting it differently. The next step was graphic design. They presented a series of visual representations of what the site would look like. Finally, they gave us a test site that we could look at and even make changes to.

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

I worked with three people. The CEO, the Chief Creative Officer and a programmer.

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

It's too early for measurable outcomes.

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

The project management style was almost informal. Most edits and feedback took place via email.

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

The Brick Factory had a clear understanding of what we wanted to accomplish, had worked with others in the nonprofit space, and made a host of recommendations that helped us communicate better via our web site.

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

One of the deadlines slipped a bit, but that was likely due to a very aggressive timeline for design, development and launch.