DevMinds

BACKGROUND

I’m an owner of a digital and marketing agency which provides consulting and digital services, delivered to SMEs that operate in Bulgaria. I also serve the role of a Business Development Manager at Jump.bg.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

As part of our rebranding strategy at Jump.bg, we were to create a new website to match our ongoing marketing strategy. For this reason, we decided to once again rely on the outstanding web development services of DevMinds.

SOLUTION

How did you select Devminds?

We are working very closely with DecMind’s team in the past few years and find their services to be of a great added value to us.

When it comes to outsourcing, aspects such as delivery time, dealing with tight deadlines, outlined processes, and outstanding quality have always been our first priority. Thus, picking DevMinds to develop our new website was only a natural thing to do.

Describe the scope of work in detail.

The overall working process of DevMinds is quite practical and very well structured along the way. Initially, they invited us for an exploratory meeting to get them acquainted with our project and set our goals and objectives in order to meet our business plan.

Overall, the DevMinds were requested to develop a custom website (as per given design) with CMS (content management system) and integration with third party services and solutions through APIs.

The next steps in the process included a bi-weekly progress review meetings where the “ready” material was presented and discussed. This helped to avoid any unnecessary mistakes and assisted in preventing any major downfalls.

Each month of work was backed by a final delivery meeting, where the “ready” work was set to be released for live (publicly available) stage. Having finalized the project, we are now in a support phase, where further improvements are made on the way.

How many people from the vendor’s team worked with you?

There was a project manager assigned as a focal point of contact throughout the whole process (right from the initial planning and all the way including the support phase). In addition, there were 1 back-end and 1 front-end web developers working closely with the PM.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes?

Right at the launch of our new website, the overall site speed was ranked with the incredible 94 points (out of 100) as per Google’s PageSpeed insights tool. In addition, the mobile responsive version was also ranked in the “green” areas with 80+ points.

This resulted in increased traffic to the website, more active average time spent on our website which helped to increase the CTR too.

Furthermore, the website won the prestigious 2-nd place in its competing market segment at the annual Bulgarian contest for website of the year (for 2020): https://bgweb.bg/s/winners/30/ 

Describe their project management style.

For this particular project, DevMinds relied on the SCRUM (AGILE) framework (i.e. including sprint planning, daily, review and retrospective meetings).

Furthermore, it felt like the team has a very good overall control of the project, which helped us over-achieve the initially- programmed goals.

What did you find most impressive or unique?

The uniqueness of DevMinds definitely construes their ability to execute with perfection down for every small detail.

Are there any areas for improvement?

At times, the team spends too much time on discussing unimportant or not so vital aspects, which might lead to “over work”, hence a slight increase in the final budget for the project. However, overall, they were moving quite well on this marker too.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We run a company that publishes a physical magazine, organizes B2B events and owns online media. Our main channel for working with customers is the website. We work for our event and online media mostly in our website: www.enterprise.bg

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to upgrade our website in H2 of 2020 and switching from WordPress to custom build platform. We needed good looking and faster website, and we trusted DevMinds for this project. We want to make it really good looking and user friendly for our customers.

SOLUTION

How did you select DevMinds and what were the deciding factors?

Our hosting provider, tell about DevMinds to us. They refer about their last project and they was really impress about quality of work.

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

We provide to DevMinds only design for this project. They upgrade design and develop front and back-end from scratch. Also, they make the migration from our old website to a new platform. We make calls for update project every week and discuss issues and new ideas. They give us a lot of advice during the project.

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

We’ve been working with one project manager and 3 or 4 for developers from DevMinds since the beginning of the project. . All communication goes through the PM and CEO.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

For first 1 month after DevMinds finish our website, we have 200% growth in our visitors. We also increase website speed over 250%

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

We use mostly zoom calls and emails on weekly base. We track tasks in DevMinds PM system.

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

They have a lot of energy and good vibes from our first meeting and this energy pushed our team to make this project even better than we think we can do it. They keep supporting us after finishing the project

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

DevMinds need do finish a little bit more project to grow properly and make bigger portfolio, so they can provide more service, but this will happen next few years.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a managed services company running a few business projects. One of those is a cloud services hosting platform called Delta.BG. We mainly have corporate clients, to whom we offer VPS and calling solutions and multiple managed services. Our main channel for working with customers is the website. They buy and upgrade services directly from the online system.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DevMinds?

We needed to upgrade our platform at the beginning of March 2020, after switching to HostBill, which is a Polish billing services provider. We needed a faster website, and we turned to DevMinds for this.

The website had to be faster and more customer-oriented than the previous site. Generally, we wanted to make it easy for customers to order services from us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

DevMinds developed our new website from scratch, made integrations with our billing platform and a WordPress component, and gave us a CMS. We just provided the design.

What is the team composition?

We’ve been working with the same project manager since the beginning of the project. All administrative communication goes through him. DevMinds has a dedicated development team of 3–4 people for our project, and we coordinate the technical parts with the lead.

How did you come to work with DevMinds?

One of our customers is a big energy company in Bulgaria. Someone there told our CEO about DevMinds, saying that they’re pretty good. They built the contact’s company’s ERP from scratch. DevMinds was close to our office, so we could have meetings with them easily.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is $6,000–$7,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with DevMinds in March 2020, and the main development took one month. They’re providing ongoing 24-hour support and additional feature development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

DevMinds created a pretty fast website compared to what we had before, and the UX when ordering services is much improved. The integration between the website and the billing platform behind it was done excellently, as well.

The site’s loading speed was the main success factor for us. Our Google PageSpeed, our score was 60–70 before the website change, and it’s gotten close to 91–92 with the new site.

How did DevMinds perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re quick and up to the task. The best part is that their project manager is always online, so we can always write to them on Skype or Rocket.chat if we have a new idea or need to change something on the site. He’s pretty quick to answer. We were able to make changes to the website even after the beginning of the project, which was great for us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re pretty open and easy to communicate with, and they don’t try to hide their know-how or how they do things. They were open with their code, too, and we were sure that we could keep working on the site even if we stopped working with DevMinds.

Are there any areas they could improve?

DevMinds is a young company, and they probably need a bit more experience, which will come with time.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It’s best to tell DevMinds everything in the beginning and be fully open about ideas and how things should be done. Here, in Bulgaria, a lot of companies believe that if they list out everything they need from the beginning, then the provider will ask them for lots of money. Because of this, they start with little projects, thinking that it will keep the overall cost of the project down. With DevMinds, if the client is open with them from the beginning about everything in the project, it’ll be easier for them to schedule costs.