Electric Citizen

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director of Communications of an aging services association

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are an association for older adult service providers, including nursing homes, assisted living settings, and adult day services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Electric Citizen to accomplish?

• Increase ease of navigation
• Provide member resources
• Realign website with brand

SOLUTION

How did you find Electric Citizen?

Online Search

Why did you select Electric Citizen over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Electric Citizen created a new site design and apply it to our existing site, while maintaining existing functionality and data integrations. The project included a robust strategy and analysis phase, where they worked with us to develop content strategy, business goals, technical architecture, user experience, and digital marketing practices.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Website completed

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Electric Citizen kept the project on track with some flexibility. They met our goals on time and on budget.

What was your primary form of communication with Electric Citizen?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email
• Messaging App

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

They were willing to work outside of the box and accommodate solutions that work for our members. The UX research on the strategy on the front end gave us a website that is tailored to our needs and the needs of our Association.

Are there any areas for improvement or something {provider_name} could have done differently?

During our project, we worked with three different PMs. It wasn't ideal, but the team did a great job compensating for the personnel changes.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for the local government of the city of Santa Barbara. I’m the webmaster.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Electric Citizen?

Our previous website was very old and outdated, and the vendor that built it was no longer supporting it. We needed a company that could develop a new website for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Electric Citizen has designed and developed a website for us from scratch. We started the engagement with a discovery process and inventory design. Electric Citizen has helped us establish a new architecture, which they call the citizen-centric model. This means that instead of a citizen having to know which department a service comes from, they only need to know the service and not the department.

Electric Citizen has migrated us to a Drupal open-source platform and hosted us on Pantheon. They’ve guided us through the entire web development process and helped us migrate content. They’ve migrated over 2,500 pages manually and programmatically moved approximately 20,000 PDFs from the old site to the new one.

We have since engaged Electric Citizen with an annual maintenance contract. In addition to that contract, we've also engaged them for additional enhancements on the site. We also have another sub-site in the works.

What is the team composition?

Our primary point of contact is Dan (CEO & Creative Director). We’ve also worked with Adam (Director of Development), as well as other team members being pulled in as their expertise was needed.

How did you come to work with Electric Citizen?

We sent out an RFP to various government website providers, but we found Electric Citizen through online research and decided to reach out to them because of their Drupal expertise.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $315,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The website is absolutely rock-solid. There were three initiatives that the city council had put forth for us. The number one priority was that the site had to pass the web content accessibility guidelines. It also had to be bilingual, and it should function well on any device, be it a phone, tablet, or desktop. Electric Citizen clearly excelled in all those and delivered a multilingual, accessible, and modern website that loads quickly and provides our constituents with exactly what they need when they need it.

The site is optimized for accessibility and responds very quickly. On the desktop, we get a better-than-average response time. We generally had about 80,000 visits per month on our previous website. Our new website, on the other hand, exceeded 300,000 visits per month in January or February 2023. Overall, the performance, design, and structure all exceeded our expectations.

How did Electric Citizen perform from a project management standpoint?

Electric Citizen has performed well in terms of project management. They’re extremely responsive — I feel like we’re the most important people in their lives with how they accommodate our questions and concerns.

We use Basecamp to manage all of our assets and for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Electric Citizen clearly knows what they’re doing. They know the technology incredibly well, and they have an excellent way of guiding us through the process of creating the new website. They had all of the tools that we needed to get to where we needed to be, not only for delivery but into the future. We also appreciate their valuable guidance and how they’re willing to push back when needed. It’s been a really good partnership and continues to be, which is why we’re still working with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing really comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Let them guide you because they’re excellent at their job.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a communications supervisor at the City of Bloomington, MN. I take part in strategy, training, content updates, maintenance and troubleshooting for our city website, supporting the work of 50 web editors. I also supervise the city's digital communications coordinator who does everything web-related that I do, only more so, serving as the first POC for our web team and for staff requesting updates and assistance.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We have contracted with Electric Citizen for a number of projects, starting in 2014 when they created a Drupal 7 content-managed website that took the place of our outdated Dreamweaver-edited site. We obtained their help again in 2021 for a redesign and update to move from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. Additionally, we have contracted with Electric Citizen annually for their invaluable website maintenance services. We are currently customers of their annual GIGAWATT website management plan.

SOLUTION

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

Our relationship began when Electric Citizen emerged as top scorer in our 2014 web design RFP process. Their proposal best matched our requirements for an ADA-focused, user-friendly, customizable, mobile-friendly and responsive website with the capacity to support a pool of web editors with varying levels of technical savvy.

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

Our most recent project's scope was to move our city's external website to Drupal 9 in light of the impending end-of-life of Drupal 7. Our concept of the deliverable was a smoothly functioning Drupal 9 site incorporating design and functionality customizations, for the benefit of our internal web team and external stakeholders. At a high level, I would characterize the project steps as: plan, design, build, validate, launch, monitor, tweak.

The project kicked off with Electric Citizen performing a detailed review of the Drupal 7 site, modules used, content types, etc., etc., identifying improvements available in Drupal 9 and potential pain points in the migration process. They met with us several times to walk us through their findings and discuss what would be needed and decide among the viable alternatives in situations where more than one approach might be viable.

After nailing down the plan of attack, Electric Citizen began designing and building the D9 site via an Agile process. They met with us weekly to share their latest work, allowing us to verify it and make suggestions all along the way. The pre-project planning/review/discussions phase took perhaps a month, and active development took maybe 3 months. It launched on time and was met with broad approval from the public and coworkers.

The site was built on Drupal 9 CMS. We used Zoom, I think, to meet regularly. We used Basecamp, and to a lesser extent Trello, to manage the work activities, deliverables, documentation and review processes. The site is hosted at Pantheon, a web hosting platform with a really reliable and Drupal-friendly architecture and interface.

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

Electric Citizen assigned a full-time project manager to keep track of all the moving parts and manage workflows and so on. Her project management skills were invaluable. Several developers worked on the build. I believe one was the lead, but the team worked seamlessly amongst themselves and in reaching out to us as the build progressed.

Much of the visual design updates were led by Dan, the company's CEO and creative director (and one of its two founders). We were already fans of Dan's grasp of responsive web design from our earlier work with him on the Drupal 7 version of our site, and he proved his acumen again this time around. The whole development direction was led by Tim, the company's other co-founder and its technical director. Tim is the smartest and most technically savvy Drupal developer, and WordPress developer, and web developer, and technical thought leader I think I'll ever meet. My respect for his knowledge, creativity and insights runs very, very deep.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The redesigned and updates site launched on time, functioning really well from the moment it went live. Per webpagetest.org, the new site is getting "A" scores for first byte time, HTTP persistent connection, HTTP compression to improve transfer speed and bandwidth usage, transfer compression and image compression. These are across-the-board improvements compared to our previous site. The new site's architecture and navigation was different from the previous site, incorporating a lot of ideas generated both by us and by Electric Citizen staff. We were pleased that basically 100% of the feedback we got from city staff was favorable. The feedback we received from the public was also abundantly positive.

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

The project ran smoothly with a dedicated project manager and a group of well qualified developers. The PM scheduled weekly remote meetings so we could all talk about progress made and expectations. They made a useful plan for tackling the project design and build. Internally they used an Agile process to take on specific functionality with each development cycle. They listened to all our questions, crazy ideas and concerns and created a well functioning website that incorporates many of our ideas while conforming to Drupal and web dev best practices.

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

We've gotten to know a good share of Electric Citizen's staff since starting a relationship with them in 2014. Their leadership and team of experts are top-notch when it comes to creative approaches to solving complex issues. Beyond that, every Citizen I've worked with has been friendly, thoughtful, and fun. Pretty unique situation that I give them lots of credit for curating.

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

Nope, not really. I think we have had a pretty much optimal relationship and experience with Electric Citizen and can only wish all vendors and consultants could match their energy.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the outreach and engagement manager for the Center for Inclusive Child Care. We provide relationship-based professional development to child-care providers throughout Minnesota. We also have a vast online resource library for parents and providers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Electric Citizen?

We hired Electric Citizen to redevelop our website. It had been between 12–15 years since we did any work on it, so it was very outdated. It wasn’t user-friendly and didn’t have many search capabilities. Our goal with Electric Citizen was to migrate our data and information to a new platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Electric Citizen seamlessly integrated our data to the new Drupal 8 site. They migrated all of our resources for our library and everything is now searchable by keywords or topics. Their team added new intuitive and user-friendly features for our audience.

What is the team composition?

There were about four people that we primarily worked with. One person served as a project lead, communicating between our teams and delivering our feedback. We also worked closely with a couple of designers and developers.

How did you come to work with Electric Citizen?

Because of where the funding was coming from, we had to obtain three bids. Electric Citizen came recommended to us by a technical partner who researched local sites based on Drupal. We interviewed them and selected their team for the project. 

How much have you invested with them?

The project ran from June 2017–February 2018. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We spent around $85,000 on the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Now, the ease of searchability on our website is great. On my end, I’m able to add plenty of resources to the site and add quality content to the site. For example, now we’re able to embed videos, forms, surveys, etc. that we didn’t have before.

How did Electric Citizen perform from a project management standpoint?

We primarily spoke through email, but I certainly had a lot of calls with their project manager. She was great about doing weekly or monthly check-ins to let us know about their progress. We had a few meetings at their office where the project manager would do a peer review of our site with our staff. Overall, they were excellent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Even though our industry wasn’t their area of expertise, they worked hard to learn about our clientele’s needs. They put a lot of effort into making a user-friendly experience. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had a very positive experience, so there’s nothing I can think of to improve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Having one person as a point of contact between the two teams is key. It’s helpful to have a project manager relaying information; it was very effective for us. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for the state of Minnesota in our Department of Revenue. We process state taxes and other tasks as mandated by our state legislature.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Electric Citizen?

We wanted to update our website to be more mainstream, responsive, and ADA compliant. We liked the features available in Drupal and wanted to work with an agency that could help us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us migrate from our old website to our new site. We moved all our documents and content from a SharePoint website. They devised new content types that would work better in Drupal and made sure the process ran smoothly. We had to resolve some difficult tasks, and they did all the design, backend work, and theming.

What is the team composition?

During the project, we worked with a team of five or six. The levels and team size varied according to the need. On average, we worked with two developers and a project manager, and we also worked closely with two or three top-level individuals.

How did you come to work with Electric Citizen?

They're a preferred agency of the service provider we chose. They were a recommended partner for our region. After we interviewed a list of five companies, we chose Electric Citizen.

How much have you invested with them?

They were subcontracted for the majority of the project, but I believe their cost ran around $180,000. After the initial migration was complete, we contacted them independently to help with maintenance and support. We've spent about $50,000 on the support portion.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in July 2018 and ended in January 2019. We still work with them on a support basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our whole company and our upper management were very happy with the results.

How did Electric Citizen perform from a project management standpoint?

We used to communicate through Slack, but now we communicate through their ticketing system. We also use email and phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're very responsive to our requests, very knowledgeable in the subject matter, and easy to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could hire more employees. A bigger team might help them satisfy our needs quicker, but I'm sure there are restrictions I'm not aware of. They do get the job done as quickly as we need, and sometimes faster.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a technical go-between. It can be difficult for non-technical people to stay on the same page with experts, and an advocate would smooth any communication issues.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the program manager at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. we’re an organization that works with legal aid organizations in Minnesota.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Electric Citizen?

We wanted to redesign our statewide legal information website. Our goal was to move it from a proprietary platform to an open-source Drupal and update it with additional functionalities, including a web app. The second part of the project included creating a database within the website for our users to view legal services organizations. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project began with a discovery phase in which we knocked out the architecture for the new site. We made sure the functionalities would all work within the database and web app. Once we established these aspects, we moved into design, thinking about the look and feel of the site. 

From there, after the redesign of the site was completed on Drupal 8, we began focusing on the new database. They helped us create it so our program staff can edit their profiles and manage their listings. We ran user-testing on the database with our program partners, migrated the information to it, and got it up and running. For the web app, we went through a similar process with multiple rounds of public user-testing, several feedback sessions, and launched it along with the site. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with Dan (CEO & Creative Director, Electric Citizen) and Tim (Co-Founder & Technical Director, Electric Citizen). Their lead design and lead programmer supported us, along with a project manager. They were our three main points of contact, keeping the project running smoothly. 

How did you come to work with Electric Citizen?

We sent out an RFP for Drupal vendors both local in Minnesota and nationally. Electric Citizen seemed to understand the project best and came in at a very reasonable price, which were our two goals in finding a team. 

How much have you invested with them?

The contract cost of the core project was $170,000, and we had additional projects with them for smaller pieces. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on this project from November 2017–February 2019. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

For each month since we’ve launched, our website traffic has increased by at least 50%, based on Google Analytics. A significant amount of new people have found our platform, so it’s been impactful. 

How did Electric Citizen perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great in terms of project management. Our project manager was really skilled in communicating and keeping the project organized. She gave us weekly or bi-weekly updates on their progress, depending on the needs of the given task. We always knew which tasks had been handled and what was left to be accomplished, which was really helpful.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Although they’re experts in Drupal, they hadn’t done a project similar to ours with Drupal 8, so they took initiative to learn about it from a third party. They were really up to date on designs and knew how to create a stable, trustworthy site. The platform was easy to navigate and looked great, which is what we wanted. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

In the beginning, the project manager left, so it was a little choppy while they looked for a replacement. However, we’ve been really satisfied and have continued to engage with them for other projects. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Just like any other development project, make sure your understanding of the project is clear. Spend more time on the discovery phase than you think you’ll need to make sure everyone is on the same page.