Edgar Allan

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP digital marketing at Walker & Dunlop, one of the largest commercial real estate finance and advisory services firms in the United States and abroad.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Edgar Allan?

We needed to overhaul our main website experience, including designing a new UI/UX and migrating to a completely new stack. The goal of this project was to align our website narrative and online identity with the expanded capabilities and expertise of our company. We also wanted to enable our marketing team to execute digital campaigns more efficiently and effectively.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Edgar Allan has provided extensive UI/UX guidance to our in-house creative team for site design. The team also did all of the Webflow development and supported a significant percentage of content migration. The main deliverables include wireframes, prototypes, Webflow components, page templates, bulk upload of CMS content, backend/frontend configurations, custom animations, and documentation.

What is the team composition?

In the development phase, we primarily worked with 2 designers, 2 developers, and 1 account manager from Edgar Allan. Our account team brought in additional specialists to support the project as needed. In our current ongoing maintenance and development support engagement, we primarily work with 1 designer and 1 account manager from Edgar Allan.

How did you come to work with Edgar Allan?

Our Webflow Enterprise account manager referred Edgar Allan to me, along with two other agencies from their official Partners program. Our core web team in Marketing (comprised of VPs from Design, Content, and Digital) chose them unanimously over other options because their expertise in both design, development, and branding complimented our teams' skills and aligned closely with our needs.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2023, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve seen a significant improvement of internal stakeholder satisfaction with the website, including our sales teams and executive leadership. Before the launch, less than 40% of respondents felt the website accurately reflected their expertise and capabilities, and very few intended to use the website in their interactions with clients. After the launch, the positive sentiment rose to over 70%, with a large majority indicating their intent to leverage the website in their marketing and sales efforts. Moreover, we’ve seen a 10x increase in content updates, campaign delivery times cut from months to days due to faster landing page and feature development, a 150% increase in organic traffic, a 30% increase in organic search traffic, up to a 250% increase in average engagement time for certain key pages, and a 56% increase in form submissions. Our marketing productivity has risen dramatically as a result of Edgar Allan’s work on the website. Build times for new pages have fallen from months to days (and even hours). This has allowed our web team to handle most website maintenance without engineering or developer support and exponentially expanded our capacity to handle content update requests. The lead time for updates has gone down from an average of 10+ business days to less than one. In the last year, we’ve rolled out dozens of major and minor feature releases with significant business impact. Our previous site was on life support and most releases were related to critical security updates.

How did Edgar Allan perform from a project management standpoint?

Edgar Allan’s project management has been excellent — by far one of the best we’ve experienced from an agency or vendor partner. Our assigned account managers have been proactive about communicating action items, progress, and blockers. When we’ve encountered occasional differences of opinion or raised concerns, they’ve worked diligently to resolve them and ensure that their team’s processes are updated if necessary. Our primary forms of communication have been virtual meetings, emails, and Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Edgar Allan is a true partner. They approach our team about the latest developments in Webflow, web technology, SEO, and conversion rate optimization. They’ve also adapted extremely well to our way of working and really do feel like a part of our team. Finally, we strongly believe we’re getting extremely good value from our engagement with Edgar Allan, both from a development and consulting perspective.

Are there any areas they could improve?

None that rise to significance worth mentioning.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior manager of digital and marketing operations for a company that develops, manufactures, and manages ATM hardware and software. We operate cash-dispensing infrastructure on behalf of financial institutions and retailers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Edgar Allan?

We needed to launch a brand-new website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Edgar Allan was a full-service agency for this project. They were responsible for the principal design, site architecture, content architecture, SEO, website development, content authoring, testing, QA, deployment, and post-deployment technical and content support. They delivered the entire new website.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 10–15 teammates from Edgar Allan.

How did you come to work with Edgar Allan?

We found them through a referral. We ran an RFP that included seven agencies of varying sizes. Edgar Allan won the business in that RFP. They provided an innovative solution to a challenging web redesign project that exceeded their competition.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from August–October 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We saw a 3x reduction in web operations costs, a solid zero-issue operation of the website, and a 200% increase in web traffic within 90 days of launch. We tracked active users through Google Analytics 4.

How did Edgar Allan perform from a project management standpoint?

They were hands-on, embedding with our team and smoothing coordination. They delivered on time. We communicated through in-person meetings, virtual meetings, and email or messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They brought deep expertise across the project and operated with rigor and flexibility. When stakeholders made late changes, they were quick with updates.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They were flawless.