Elevato

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the buyer and customer liaison for an online agricultural tool company. We well machetes online to landscapers, surveyors, fish processors, farm crop picking crews, outdoor enthusiasts, collectors, and more.

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

Our website was on the Yahoo Stores platform and wasn't serving our needs anymore. We engaged their team to be our in-house developers to design and build out a WooCommerce site for us. The plan was to improve our site's e-commerce functionality and flexibility and then work to continue to increase our traffic over the next several months and years.

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

After speaking with several members of their team, it became obvious that they were going to be a great fit. They had built out several ecommerce sites that had exploded in popularity.

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

We were given a generalized proposal for work at first. Once we approved that, we got some wireframes of what the site might look like. We wanted something that was easy to search but looked like a "normal" ecommerce site. Then we approved that and then the real theme/design was shown to us. We made a few tweaks and then they went and built the website out. They used Wordpress and woocommerce. The site was so much better than the old Yahoo store.

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

We worked with a project manager and 2 developers. There was a graphics guy at the beginning but he didnt work on the woocommerce stuff.

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

After launching our site, we saw a 330% increase in traffic. Our sales grew by 4x. Many people left comments about how they liked the new site epsecially the search by brand and blade length. The SEO team really knocked it out of the park. Using moz.com they showed us how we ranked #1 for many many words and phrases - way more than we were expecting.

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

They communicated with us via email and teamwork and in-person meetings mainly. Sometimes they were a bit slow to respond, but they were in a busy season.

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

They understood our pain and our daily work. We didnt have to explain to them what an ecommerce store was or why it was important to be on the first page of Google. They were way more than a team that just makes pretty websites. Their knowledge went deep! As we grew, they were able to tie our system to other systems that helped order fulfillment. Huge savings in time and manpower. They definitely treat us like co-workers and not customers.

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

The transition from the old site to the new one could have gone smoother. But that may have been an issue with Yahoo. Selling machetes is not easy. Sometimes Google would stop all our ads because we were "selling a weapon" and getting that fixed took longer than anybody wanted.

I am the Owner, Eyelash Extension Supply Store of Sinful Lashes

We are an e commerce and brick and mortar retail/ academy

• To help us with SEO ranking
• To help us with Facebook and Google ads
• To expand our reach to new customers.

Online Search

Other

Virtual Meeting

They did SEO work on our site and unfortunately our ranking dropped dramatically. From 38 to under 20. They also designed a Facebook campaign that was supposed to be approved before launch, they did not send and launched a really badly designed campaign and the text did not match the poorly designed photos, it cost-us $7,000 with absolutely no return. Our google ads were equally as bad and every month they ran them our income kept dropping. It’s has been a very expensive mistake working with them.

• There were none

They did not deliver items on time and some not at all. We are still waiting on them.

The salesman JP was fantastic on promising great results, unfortunately they did not live up to expectations.

Yes, we asked to work with a new team and one of managers Tessa assured us that is we have this team another chance it would improve, it did not

Please describe your company and your position there.

When I worked with Elevato, I was the director of special projects for the Columbia Chamber of Commerce in Columbia, Missouri.

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

We were seeking a more streamlined approach to managing an annual multi-faceted annual fundraising campaign. We needed a way to manage the 100+ volunteers participating in the campaign, track the volunteers' reward incentives, track the dollars the volunteers' raised and an easy-to-read dashboard for all participating in the campaign.

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

I had worked with Steve for many years on various small IT solutions in our office. When the chamber started this campaign project, we were working from an Excel spreadsheet that would frequently crash.

I knew we needed something more robust, accessible and scalable. I would often ask Steve, "Is it possible to do X,Y,Z?" Steve would always answer, "Anything is possible." He helped me walk through what we needed and even offered suggestions that ultimately made it a much better, more user friendly product.

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

It's been several years now, so I'm not as familiar with the technologies used - other than it is a web-based platform. We worked with Steve to define the scope of work based on the structure of the Total Resource Campaign we were previously running. We talked through workflow needs, setting up volunteer access, setting up staff access, leaderboard tracking, contract creation and more.

We defined timelines for the project based upon when the campaign was scheduled to launch and worked backwards. Knowing this tool could be useful to other chambers of commerce, we got some input from others running total resource campaigns.

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

There were at least 4 people assisting with the project. Project manager, two developers, a designer.

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

We launched the campaign at the scheduled time, including training sessions for the volunteers participating in the campaign. The first campaign ran relatively smoothly. We had good communication with the Elevato team throughout the campaign. Any issues that needed to be addressed with the software were handled quickly. Because the team was nimble, we streamlined some processes on the fly for the betterment of the program.

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

Project management went very smoothly. We used Basecamp to communicate throughout the project. Everyone working on the project knew what was needed and when.

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

They were totally willing to sit down and listen to what we needed rather than try and throw an out-of-the-box solution at us. They offered suggestions and questions throughout the project development that helped our team really prioritize what we needed to accomplish.

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

We had a great experience with them throughout the project. I think they learned as much from us as we did from them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Vice President for a not for profit employment center. We provide educational assistance, vocational courses and employment support.

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

Our website was created over 15 years ago and in need of updating, especially for adjusting for mobile devices and more interactive forms. with no IT employees on staff, we hired Elevato to help drive traffic engagement and increase program enrollments.

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

We have a history of working with Elevato on several other major projects in the past and have always been very satisfied with their process, the people and the results.

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

After a kickoff meeting, Elevato offered a few options for design. We made our selection and began meeting weekly to determine content placement and to update text.

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

For the most part, we worked directly with one team member. I think she was the account manager. Occasionally, other tech staff joined our meetings to talk through technical options.

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

Unfortunately, we don't really have any data prior to our website revision to report changes. We do feel aneccdotally, that we definitely receive more inquiries for enrollment with the new website.

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

We were busy time at our organization with several other unrelated projects at the time, and Elevato staff were very good about keeping us on track with this website project without being pushy. We mainly used the Teamwork app to share and update documents.

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

The provided a high quality website that is very attractive, easy to maneuver for the user and simple for our staff to make updates. Their staff were professional yet approachable and open to our ideas and suggestions.

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

Our original vision for the website included more interactive forms, which the Elevato staff were somewhat hesitant to encourage to a point, possibly since we are a not for profit and they were attempting to save us money on external services which might require a financial investment.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a former executive at the University of Missouri.

What challenges were you trying to address with Elevato?

We wanted to build a CMS that people could use to submit articles and information to the school of journalism’s website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Elevato helped us build a custom software platform during my time involved in the project. They customized it by adding functionalities and designing its UI according to our requests. The most challenging task was moving from department to department within the university's structure and securing clearances to keep going forward; that was the most time-consuming part. In addition, they helped us migrate our existing web platform into WordPress, which was a big job because we had tens of thousands of articles we wanted to put into our new site.

What was the team composition? 

I worked with around ten members of Elevato's team.

How did you come to work with Elevato?

We evaluated several companies that went through a bidding process for our projects, and Elevato offered a very good price, which fitted our possibilities.

What is the status of this engagement? 

I worked with them from January 2012–January 2021. When I retired from the university, they were still working together.

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

While I was involved in the project, we saw an increase in our website's traffic and Google rankings, among other search engines.

How did Elevato perform from a project management standpoint?

In my experience, Elevato did a great job in communication, meeting deadlines, and staying within budget. In addition, they had an organized team, and everyone knew their role, which enabled us to contact any member directly depending on our needs. Overall, I didn't think we would've been able to get the project going without their working mechanism and commitment.

Regarding tools and communication, we used email and a platform that helped us speed up the process and receive notifications whenever there was an issue so they could fix it immediately.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Elevato's agility and ability to deliver everything quickly were their best attributes.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Try to get the most out of their transparency; they were great at explaining things to our non-technical staff and communicating with our departments.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of Credo, a marketing matchmaking company.

What challenges were you trying to address with Elevato?

We needed help with software development and SEO.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Elevato has provided further software development for our existing WordPress site. They’ve updated the code for a web development matching system that we’ve recently launched. The main function of the platform is to match companies with web development providers based on their needs and types of projects. In addition, Elevato’s team is taking care of the system’s maintenance by fixing any bugs that arise.

Moreover, Elevato is helping us with blog content creation and SEO. Regarding SEO, they’re doing an audit and updating all our pages to improve our SEO rankings. Additionally, they’re doing keyword research to find new words and ensure that the ones we already had were accurate.

What was the team composition? 

We’ve worked with seven members of Elevato’s team, including Jake (CEO), a project manager, their software team, SEO specialists, and content developers.

How did you come to work with Elevato?

Our founder had worked with Elevato in the past. We chose them for this project because they seemed to know what they were doing and had a full spectrum of services they could provide to support us with our software and SEO.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent around $250,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2022, and the engagement is still ongoing.

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

Elevato has been great at going in and identifying our clunky coding to update and fix it with a thorough explanation of why it wasn’t working as expected. Moreover, we’re noticing an increase in our website traffic and the ranking of some of our articles.

How did Elevato perform from a project management standpoint?

Elevato has been communicative, involved, and available for us whenever we need to reach out to them — we use Slack, weekly video calls on Zoom, and a Teamwork page as our main communication and project management tools. In addition, they’re meeting all of our deadlines and are transparent in explaining why sometimes our SEO budget goes up.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Elevato’s best attribute is Jake’s willingness to get on the calls to ensure that we’re pleased with their work and that everything’s running efficiently.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on because everything’s going well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear scope and understanding of what you want and the goals you’re trying to reach with that. In addition, be engaged with them to go through the project’s strategy and get the most out of them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Chief Communications Officer of The Callaway Bank. I oversee all aspects of our digital marketing, product development, and customer service initiatives, including our website and promotional advertising.

What challenge were you trying to address with Elevato?

We initially engaged Elevato to redevelop our website to update its look, feel, and ease of navigation. We also needed them to help us with content management so that our marketing team could regularly update the website themselves.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Elevato has supported many of our projects over the years, but we kicked off the partnership with the website development project. We had an existing website, but they essentially built us a new website from scratch using WordPress. They handled everything from design to development, including rewriting the content, creating new graphics, and customizing the code to change the site’s navigation style.

Elevato continues to host our website via Amazon and ensures it’s protected from a technical and cybersecurity standpoint. Now, they help manage our SEO rankings and digital marketing efforts. They’ve improved our citations, written content, and built backlinks. Additionally, they manage our Google Business listing and monitor our blog mentions to ensure the links and contact information are correct. 

The team has also helped us implement Facebook Ads and paid advertising on other online platforms. Furthermore, they’ve created landing pages to generate more leads and worked on our page-loading speed to improve SEO. The team has also audited our website and restructured it to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) international standard.

What is the team composition?

The team varies depending on the project, but we worked with three teammates on website development, including an account manager and technical network expert for our website management needs.

How did you come to work with Elevato?

I found Elevato through a recommendation from another company.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $150,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with Elevato since August 2017; the partnership is ongoing.

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

I’m really happy with the results. We’ve seen improvement in our website rankings, especially in our monthly leads. We’ve also seen an increase in paid rankings for most of our products. We rank first in our market for some products, which is nice because we’re a small business. Elevato continuously monitors our rankings to adhere to Google’s changing algorithm; working with a partner who stays on top of things has been nice.

How did Elevato perform from a project management standpoint?

The Elevato team has done a fairly good job managing projects. We have ongoing budget discussions, and they’ve never gone over budget without our consent. We communicate via email and Slack and meet monthly via Zoom. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their responsiveness distinguishes them from other vendors we’ve worked with. Any time we need something, they address our needs appropriately or bring in extra resources, which is nice. If something isn’t working correctly, or we’re not getting the results we desire, they bend over backward to address the issue. 

For example, we faced a complication with our digital banking site where we needed support with backend programming. Unfortunately, the timing coincided with their annual employee retreat, so they were out of the office. I was able to get in touch with one of the managers to see if they could help us, and the team made themselves available to make it work within a limited time frame.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Over the years, we’ve worked with 2–3 points of contact, and starting over with a new representative has been challenging at times, but it’s nothing major. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend spending time sharing details about your company and engaging in an upfront conversation about who you are and what you need help with. Make an effort to communicate with them instead of assuming Elevato will automatically know how to meet your needs. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of an evaluation consulting firm that works with technical vendors to develop software tools to help with data collection for various health clients.

What challenge were you trying to address with Elevato?

We needed help with mobile and web development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Elevato is our software developer for a mobile application and web-based database that takes in electronic health record information and survey data from clients and patients in clinics to combine it into exports we can analyze. The mobile app allows us to identify a patient based on a list queried from the database. Then, we can issue a new survey that can be locked via pin code on the device, so it essentially works as a group hierarchy. Each clinic has its specific group and can only access the information for their clinic; they can pull from there by querying the patients on their list. When they select a patient, they select which survey to deploy. Once they start deploying the survey, it locks the device from accessing any other database information or queries so they can hand the device over to the student sitting in front of them.

We continue working with Elevato to fix bugs. At some point, we’ll look at the progress on the roadmap to create the next optimized plan. Right now, we’re just ensuring the tools work as intended with the mobile software and the web database.

What is the team composition?

Justin (CIO) has been our main point of contact since before the acquisition. We’ve also worked with a data scientist, engineers, and a project manager.

How did you come to work with Elevato?

They were a referral; their headquarters were in the same city as ours. When they were acquired by Elevato, we continued our contract with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $300,000 last year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked with them since January 2019; it’s been a long engagement.

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

We’ve looked at the app’s functionality in general. The initial development took a long time, and the web-based database was launched in 2021. In 2022, we focused on maintaining the platform and ensuring we found all the bugs and glitches. Overall, Elevato has been able to deliver on our ambitious roadmap, even though we need to work on defining our expectations and needs.

How did Elevato perform from a project management standpoint?

They meet deadlines and stay within the budget for the most part. Our budget is higher than anticipated, but we just want to deliver a good product.

We do weekly meetings on Zoom, communicate on Slack, and share Asana. Since we started working in Asana, Elevato has been significantly more responsive, and the work has been more well-defined. Whenever we tag Justin, we know we’ll get a direct response within the same day, if not within the next hour. Overall, they take care of us and are committed to making us feel heard.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The relationship we have with them is outstanding. It’s taken a long time to build, but we’ve gotten to a space where we can clearly articulate what we need and know they’ll do their best to make it happen.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would’ve been helpful to make a distinction between what was possible and what was actually feasible when we onboarded. There was some space in earlier conversations where we asked if we could do some things, and they answered it was possible. However, there wasn’t a lot of guidance on what they’d really recommend.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My biggest advice is to make sure you have someone internally to be the point of contact. Having a point of contact to manage expectations and details to work will help bump priorities and make the relationship smooth.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a former website development consultant for Mayo Enterprises.

What challenge were you trying to address with Elevato?

We engaged Elevato to create a website design that enables trade unions to advertise apprenticeship positions. Our primary goals were to target highly qualified individuals for these positions and minimize the number of questions people called in with. We also wanted to advertise these positions to a wider audience.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I worked as the liaison between the nonprofit and Elevato, so I was responsible for taking the end client’s requirements and communicating them to the team. After interviewing members of the apprenticeship program from each trade union, I compiled their goals and created a presentation showing a brief overview of the site architecture and flow. 

Then, Elevato created the website using custom code, which is now open to the public. They were also responsible for the front- and backend design and the website’s backend is hosted on AWS. The website has three levels of architecture. The primary level is a general level that provides descriptions of each apprenticeship, while the secondary level outlines the details of each trade. The trades include bricklaying, electrical work, sheet metal forming, and others. 

Each apprenticeship program has different processes, geographic boundaries, qualifications, and pay levels. When users are interested in a particular trade, they can navigate to our site to figure out the application process. The team also created a feature that enables users to submit their addresses, where the site automatically redirects them to the correct union page. They did this by digitizing a combination of printed maps and putting them in a database. 

Elevato has also helped with website maintenance and hosting. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager and individual developers who worked on the frontend design, backend coding, and graphic design. 

How did you come to work with Elevato?

I had worked with them on multiple projects when they were under a different company name. They demonstrated expertise in decision-making algorithms that take data and display different results, which was important for this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested $30,000 with Elevato. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July–December 2022.

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

Elevato met my expectations for the website perfectly and did an excellent job with the back-and frontend design and development. The frontend is beautiful and looks fabulous on mobile, far better than the initial drawings I supplied. They did a bang-up job, and we received a lot of compliments regarding the website’s ease of use and straightforward navigation. 

We showcased the website at a conference and received several dozen business cards from other unions who wanted to be featured on the site. When we presented to the unions, we thought they'd be all excited about the amount of information and content on the site, but they were most thrilled about the map and address feature because it directed users to the correct unions, which decreased call volume. We anticipate that the project will receive additional funding as a result of the excitement. 

Prior to engaging Elevato, the system to apply for trade union apprenticeships was arcane, convoluted, and manual. Those interested in apprenticeship programs would have to frequent the trade union’s office in person to speak with a representative. Now, we’ve been able to open up apprenticeship opportunities online and mirror a similar process similar to online job applications. 

How did Elevato perform from a project management standpoint?

Elevato worked diligently to accomplish tasks before each deadline. They were clear communicators, and we went through minimal revisions. I handled the QA process, and any issues I found were very minor technical glitches. I sent them a list of fixes that they executed quickly. They were responsive to my input, and I really valued their degree of honesty and transparency. We communicated via email and Zoom. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Elevato has an impressive ability to take complicated data from various sources and figure out how to execute it with code. They orchestrated fabulous solutions. For example, they found a way to create a map with more specific pins than just a general zip code. They created several algorithms and probability functions to plot pins on more specific spots of a map to show users how close they were to a certain job and which public transit routes could take them there.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were stretches of time when they didn’t respond to my emails for a couple of days due to being out of the office, so I recommend they add a backup person to respond to emails and provide status updates. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Elevato is a very sophisticated firm, so if you’re looking for the cheapest option possible, they’re not going to be a good fit. I encourage you to engage them for more complex jobs.

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of True Blue Life Insurance

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Life insurance agency

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Elevato to accomplish?

• Content creation for website
• Content edition
• Website SEO

How did you find Elevato?

Other

Why did you select Elevato over others?

Other

What was the size of Elevato’s team?

2-5 Employees

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

The project entails creating 10 articles per month per hour10 articles per month for our insurance website. I felt the work was very poorly done, and I canceled the service three months later. Elevato has continued to send me invoices for work they have never performed. Stay away from this company. It’s very difficult to get a hold of anybody in the work is subpar.

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

• Approved content
• Posted content to my website

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

The deliverables were always extremely past due. They were billing me monthly for deliverables, but it took over 60 days for them to deliver a months worth of work.

What was your primary form of communication with Elevato?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

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

I wish I never do business with this company.

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

It has been extremely difficult to get a hold of somebody in the billing department. Their marketing and sales team is completely disconnected from the accounting team.