Eightfold

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and director of product development for Cloud Consent Solutions, a patient engagement platform. We offer a consolidated platform for patients to access and medical providers to compile educational materials pre- and post-surgical operations. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Eightfold?

We needed help with adding a new feature to our platform. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Eightfold helped us implement a few features in our patient education platform. It gives patients access to advisors who can guide patients through choosing premium services in disciplines like ophthalmology or plastic surgery. Patients receive a customized report with recommendations based on their lifestyle, financial information, employment, and other factors.

Eightfold built the feature in Python and Django to match the platform’s core. They also use React in additional features. 

What is the team composition?

We work with a software developer, designer, and project manager. Henry (CEO / Co-Founder, Eightfold) is in 90% of our meetings.

How did you come to work with Eightfold?

Eightfold is based in our town, which is in a rural area where everyone in the tech community knows each other. We found each other, I talked about the features we wanted to add to our product, and Henry said that his company had the skill set.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $15,000–$20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in September 2018 and is ongoing.

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

We don’t do much tracking for the features that Eightfold creates. The majority of the functionality is complete, and we’re in maintenance mode for the time being. 

How did Eightfold perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate once or twice a week. Even when there’s travel, Eightfold responds within an hour to let us know. They also alert us whenever our senior developer is needed for another project so that we can adjust our priorities as needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Eightfold’s communication is top-notch. Also, they’re not afraid to tackle hard problems and suggest alternate ways to do things. Sometimes, we have to go with the less-than-optimal solution, but they’ll understand that and continue to offer different solutions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re a small company. We want to get some critical projects off the ground that would require more resources at Eightfold.

Any advice for potential customers?

Know what you want to build before getting into a contract. However, also keep an open mind—Eightfold will suggest new technologies and techniques that may work better than what you’ve planned.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former digital marketing manager for Cepheid, which is a company that develops, manufactures, and markets molecular diagnostics technology.

What challenge were you trying to address with Eightfold?

We wanted to position ourselves as thought leaders in our industry and realized that our website was lacking the right sort of content to get us into that position. We were locked into a content management system that couldn’t give us sufficient design capability or functionality, so we decided to hire a company that could help us enhance our UI/UX, SEO, and content strategy.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built a microsite for us from the ground up. Their managing director worked with us on every step of the project, including content strategy, and design, in order to create a cohesive user experience that matched tonally to our larger site.

Once we planned the vision for the project, we worked with the design team to solidify our information hierarchy for the site and then the developer built everything out. I provided the direction for the content because I understood our customers intimately. Eightfold came in from an SEO and UX perspective to translated my notes into decisions about how to animate or lay out elements of the site.

What is the team composition?

We worked with the managing director, a designer, a developer, and a couple of additional UX designers.

How did you come to work with Eightfold?

I’d worked with their managing director while at a previous company, so I recognized his name when I researched Eightfold for this project. We interviewed five agencies, including some based in Silicon Valley, but their team gave us a bold pitch that made it clear they understood our vision and could execute it the way we wanted. Their proposal also suited our budget needs well.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost about $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from September 2018–April 2019.

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

Despite being a small project, this ended up being a valuable investment for us. In addition to paying for the microsite, we purchased all of the templates that Eightfold built for us using Drupal. Having a new content management system and custom designs has allowed us to reach customers further down the funnel in addition to those at the top.

How did Eightfold perform from a project management standpoint?

We had weekly one-hour meetings where their team would outline a development plan and make adjustments based on our needs. We didn’t meet our original launch deadline, but that was largely due to our internal approval process for the site’s written content.

In terms of day-to-day project managing, I felt like Trello was an effective way to share our content. It was nice to reduce the amount of emails and I liked how easy it was to reference previous materials or leave feedback.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were attentive to our needs and personalized their service to maximize our outcomes. The healthcare industry is extremely regulated, so we have to pass multiple layers of approval before delivering content to our customers. This site went through many iterations before we went live and the Eightfold team managed that process gracefully. They were extremely detail-oriented in terms of making sure that all the required changes were implemented.

I was also impressed by how quickly they were able to transition from idea to concept to deliverable. They bring their designers and developers into the conversation from the outset, which lets us have direct communication and makes the project run more smoothly overall.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was a noticeable shift in attention to detail when we moved from the design phase to the development phase. Once the developers took over, I found myself having to spend a lot more time correcting copy mistakes and other minor errors.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to take a collaborative tone at the outset so you can set clear expectations about what each party’s role is. They felt more like a part of our team than a contractor, and I think that’s down to how we introduced and defined the project. My other suggestion is to set aside time near the end of the project so you can review it thoroughly before launching your site.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of digital marketing at Reflections Recovery Center. We’re a substance abuse treatment facility based in Prescott, Arizona.

What challenge were you trying to address with Eightfold?

Our leadership wanted Eightfold to step in and help us get back on track in terms of our digital presence, as well as educate my team about the various strategies and channels we could utilize in that realm.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a kickoff meeting with Eightfold, where they essentially went through our current website and optimized its loading times. We were pretty abysmal; PageSpeed Insights showed us in the 20s for desktops, and in the single-digit range for mobile. We knew we had a lot of work ahead of us.

First, Eightfold went in and fixed a lot of CSS, image rendering, and other technically-driven issues that are above my head, so that both our page would load quickly and effectively on both desktop and mobile.

From there, they kicked off a keyword research and SEO campaign. They did a ton of research on the different keywords each of our pages really should be ranking for on Google, and optimized those pages. SEO on Google’s terms tends to take a couple of months, so the timeline was about right: it was two or two and a half months before we started seeing an uptick.

Additionally, they’ve created three SEO blog posts per month for us, since we started. They’re also updating old blog posts to convert a little better, by adding some calls to action to improve the high bounce rates we had previously.

Although we haven’t done any paid social media advertising through them, they’re managing all of our organic profiles, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter. They also take care of all our hosting, domain, and DNS setup. Overall, they’ve been a tremendous help to our entire digital presence.  

 What is the team composition?

We worked with their SEO, a principal, two graphic designers, and one point of contact to handle our blogging and copywriting. The team has been amazing.

 How did you come to work with Eightfold?

We learned of them through word-of-mouth. They’re local to Prescott, so we lined up naturally.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost varies, depending on our projects, but we spend around $6,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Eightfold in January 2019, and our work is ongoing.

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

We’ve seen upticks across the board. Our traffic, sessions, and SEO have all increased. The bounce rate has gone down, which is great. In terms of conversions, we’ve had more phone calls and form fills, and, as a result of those, more people wanting to come to our facility and not another one. Everything is slowly but surely turning in the right direction, in terms of SEO and organic social media.

I don’t want to give the impression that they built and ran the PPC campaigns because they didn’t, but they were an integral part of that process. In terms of proper tracking analytics, everything’s gone in the right direction, and it’s been a good year so far.

How did Eightfold perform from a project management standpoint?

Our collaboration has been wonderful thus far. We use Airtable to track our progress together while Eightfold uses MeisterTask for project management from their end.

It’s nice that they’re local. I go there once or twice per week, for 1-3 hour sessions. Those trips enhance our communication and are great for reviewing our timeline.  

 What did you find most impressive about them?

Their cultural environment is amazing. We can find people who are going to do a good job, and for the right price, but the personal approach that Eightfold has taken with us—being willing to educate me and get me up to speed—has helped our whole team.

They’re always willing to sit down anytime we need something, and they’re always upfront. It’s a good feeling to work with a company like that. It’s not something we’ve found with other marketing agencies thus far, and we look forward to our future successes together.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind. I hope they continue to grow.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

In my experience, as long as the potential client has a dedicated point of contact and an open line of communication, they should be fine. I’ve seen it happen in the past, with other partnerships: communication gets lost, things fall behind, and people start pointing fingers.

From an organizational standpoint, the client should make sure they have a contact who either is technologically-inclined or is willing to learn.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Safe + Fair is a clean label food company based in Chicago, IL. I am the Head of E-Commerce, so I handle everything from the website to paid ads.

For what projects/services did your company hire Eightfold?

website upgrades and ongoing development

What were your goals for this project?

increase conversion rates, average order value, and website load times.

How did you select this vendor?

referral from another agency. had previously used 2 other inferior companies.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

they handle everything from uploading new products, new hero images (design and implementation), free shipping meters, email capture forms, and overall site aesthetics.

What was the team composition?

just myself on our end. I believe henry has a few developers working for him but I'm not sure how many

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

our conversion rates and AOV have increased significantly since using Eightfold.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was clunky at first (our fault) but we began to put processes in place

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I cannot stress enough how hardworking this group is. they respond immediately to all requests and provide realistic time frames for accomplishing the stated deliverables. they also seem to be on the clock 24/7!

Are there any areas for improvement?

Their design capabilities are a tad limited, but we didn't need much overall.