Cool Blue Interactive

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the associate director of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, a nonprofit that uses film as a vehicle for interethnic and intercommunal dialogue. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cool Blue Interactive?

We wanted to build a public-facing website for our nonprofit, but we didn’t have enough resources to complete the project internally.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cool Blue Interactive was required to build a website that reflected our brand and showcased our current events. They also integrated a secure payment portal, which allows visitors to purchase festival tickets online. The platform also features a separate path for admin users, featuring an aggregated review system and a scheduling tool. We are always updating the site, so their team created a modular design for our convenience.

Since completing the website, their efforts are spent developing standalone sites and additional web tools. At least three discreet statements of work are completed throughout a single year. They lead every stage, from design to execution. Drupal 7 is our preferred CMS platform, but some of the sites use DotNetNuke. All of our sites are hosted on Rackspace, which Cool Blue Interactive manages.

What is the team composition?

Their studio director serves as our main point of contact, but their president and founder is also actively involved with our account. They both oversee a team of designers and coders.

How did you come to work with Cool Blue Interactive?

One of our volunteers recommended them based on our preference for small local vendors with experience in the arts. We immediately knew that they would be a perfect fit for our project.

How much have you invested with them?

To date, we have spent between $500,000 – $750,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership began in 2008.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Cool Blue Interactive has equipped us with an impressive selection of custom web tools, which our organization has come to rely on for efficiency. Our internal expansion would have been impossible without its upgraded technology. While their efforts on the backend supported our scalability, the frontend is optimized for user engagement. Our core consumers have responded positively to the website’s simplicity, and the convenient payment portal has helped us attract new audiences.

How did Cool Blue Interactive perform from a project management standpoint?

We meet a few times for each project, but they are also available to discuss their work via email, phone, and Slack. They are always responsive and transparent. Our teams have found Airtable to be extremely useful because we can manage our tasks and database within one platform.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Cool Blue Interactive always has the perfect prescription for our business needs. They have become an essential partner to our daily business, which cannot be said about most vendors. Their team is very helpful at guiding us through the development process and finding innovative ways to enhance our website.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We have worked with them for more than a decade, and we have yet to experience any issues.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Cool Blue Interactive may not be the best fit for projects that require a large team, but they are more than capable of delivering high-quality web products.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a commercial real estate company located in Atlanta, Georgia. We also have property in Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Houston and Austin. That includes projects we’re operating as part of our portfolio and certain developments. We’re publicly traded, and we currently have about 17 million square feet of office space spread out across our locations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Cool Blue Interactive?

We engaged them initially to help us redesign a website for Terminus, our mix-use project. That project was different from anything we had done before because it included office, retail and residential spaces. We needed a group that understood each of those aspects of real estate and could help us bring all of that together. We featured the site in all sorts of advertising, both in print and online. It was the place that we sent people to before the project was completed.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Cool Blue Interactive designed and built the website for us and provided SEO. There was a lot of strategy work involved due to the nature of the project. We needed to make sure that people were going to the site and weren’t clicking right off. We needed to be sure that the site was giving them all the information they needed right up front. Cool Blue did a great job of helping us think through everything—floor plans, imagery, contact information, web forms and so forth. There were a lot of different pieces to the project.

Cool Blue has redone our corporate site twice. We finished our second redesign last year. They’ve also helped me with the PPC campaigns that I do for certain properties. Those projects are on-offs, which depend on the particular properties.

How did you come to work with Cool Blue Interactive?

We received several proposals and narrowed the field down to a few interviews, and they obviously made the cut. They did a nice job in their presentation and brought in the account manager that we ended up working with and a couple of their graphic designers. It’s nice to meet the people that will actually be doing the work for you.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The Terminus project was at least $20,000. The revision of our corporate website was $60,000. The monthly costs averages at around $2,500.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked with them at least for as long as the eight years I’ve been here. The corporate work is ongoing. They handle continued upgrades and send me notes asking what should be updated. With projects, it depends. We’re currently redesigning the websites for each of our properties, which should take about a year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics or other feedback from this engagement?

The traffic on our corporate site has gone through the roof since we did the redesign. A lot of that comes down to the fact that Cool Blue Interactive took the time to do the needed research. They made sure the site would be mobile compatible. It was a responsive site, which was something new for us. It works very well, and every time they implement a pay per click campaign, the site traffic increases significantly.

The monthly reports help me see the increases. If we don’t see any on a given month, we will have a quick call and see what we can do. They make sure we’re putting the website everywhere we can. It’s a good relationship. I feel that they’re thinking about our account every day. It’s comfortable for us to bring up something that might not be working very well and try alternatives.

How did Cool Blue Interactive perform from a project management standpoint?

They do a great job of sending out a monthly report, and they help with the renewal process for our domains. We downsized our IT department a couple of years ago. When that happened, there were a lot of little things that we didn’t want to fall through the cracks. I transitioned a fair amount of the monthly maintenance and monthly reports to them, which they handle quite nicely.

What distinguishes Cool Blue Interactive from other providers?

A lot of it has to do with the small size of their agency and the relationships we have developed with them. I work with a fair number of different groups, and Cool Blue does a particularly good job of taking care of us. That speaks volumes. Anytime we do a new site, I will call Cool Blue and see what their quote is.

I manage all our web-related assets. My team trusts Cool Blue and trusts me to get new projects done. We’re a very well known real estate company here in Atlanta, and as we’ve started to grow into other markets, it’s been fun to have Cool Blue working with us and having the opportunity to do new projects with them.

Is there anything Cool Blue Interactive could have improved or done differently?

I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. They do a great job of allocating the work to each person and making sure that no one feels overwhelmed. Their response times are always good too.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I work for the CDC Foundation. We're a nonprofit organization that supports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We work to develop public-private partnerships to help expand our work. We currently have around 300 projects related to health. We're located in Atlanta, Georgia.

What is your position?

I'm the associate vice president for communications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Cool Blue Interactive?

We were a client already when I started working here six years ago. We've had a long-standing relationship with them. I was not involved in the initial discussion, but we have worked with them on between eight and 10 different projects in the course of the last seven or eight years.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

For our main website, we were trying to create a more robust system that we could manage in house, with day-to-day updates. Of course, we wanted a more user-friendly site and one on which we could add information easily going forward. I think that was our first site using Drupal and, since then, we've continued to use that platform.

How did you come to work with Cool Blue Interactive?

I started when they were working on the site, so I don't know how many vendors they looked at, or what decision making went into it exactly. I think they had been working with them on some smaller projects, so they were selected to do this project as well. Part of it was the need for a robust content management system. They have good experience with Drupal and recommended we use that platform.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was probably between $50,000 and $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them probably around seven or eight years ago, and we still collaborate.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We've had great feedback on the site. Throughout the years, we have continued to grow. In the past years, our page views have doubled. We've had a significant year because we've been involved in the Ebola response. It's been a great resource for those looking to partner with us, and that's significant because we're looking for donors and people to support our work. They helped us build a blog to continue to share our message and keep our content fresh. Actually, we will soon have an update on it as it's been five years since it was made.

How did Cool Blue Interactive perform from a project management standpoint?

We've been very happy with the work, and we've continued to use Cool Blue Interactive for various projects, so that speaks for itself.

What distinguishes Cool Blue Interactive from other providers?

We get personalized attention. They a somewhat small company, but they have various capabilities from website design, creating email templates, understanding analytics, and answering any questions that we have. They're very responsive, and we've enjoyed the people we worked with. They've been very knowledgeable.

Is there anything Cool Blue Interactive could have improved or done differently?

I think there're always things you could do better in a project, but I don't have anything specific.