HUSL Digital

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

We’ve heard nothing but positive feedback about how the email newsletter looks and how easy it is to navigate. We experienced constant growth of our subscriber base since the launch of the newsletter, and we’re seeing a very low attrition rate.

How did UpTrending perform from a project management standpoint?

Our project manager was completely organized and kept us on track. After every meeting, he’d summarize the next steps and follow up with the appropriate members of his team. He made our lives much easier. The designer would challenge our ideas and collaborate with us to find the right fit for what we wanted.

Overall, they were tremendous communicators. We operated out of Basecamp, Slack, and emails. Our team made a lot of last-minute changes, and they were flexible to accommodate them. Everything on their end stayed on time, even if I can’t say the same for us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They treated our priorities like their priorities. They delivered like they were members of our own team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They performed really well overall, but there were still a few bugs that made it to me through their QC testing.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We get a lot of compliments on our site nowadays. The industry that we’re in doesn’t have a lot of well-designed sites. UpTrending has found a niche in the data analytics industry, helping companies level up the visual and brand appearance of their company online. They’ve had a lot of success doing that for companies in the B2B space. It’s a good trait for them to have.

When I started here, our site was interesting but it didn’t really serve any business purposes. We’ve gone through a big transformation, keeping the design aesthetic and initial look and feel of the brand, and making our website, content, and branding more business oriented in order to help us move from an interesting, early stage startup to more of a well-defined business that’s presenting themselves in a very professional manner.

UpTrending’s ability to manage design, development, and hosting is incredibly nice to have, and I think it’s actually critical for companies. If you hire a one-person design or development shop, they won’t be able to scale up to what you need them to do and they also have other clients, so it becomes a pain. UpTrending’s model works really well for us, especially as we scaled up.

If we need to get a project done, they can bring in other designers and developers. That flexibility is really critical for where we’re at as a business, and a lot of other growing technology companies would benefit from that model as well.

How did UpTrending perform from a project management standpoint?

We set a six-week redesign phase. Redesigns, especially with the timeline and resources we had, are always very difficult processes. It was an impossible deadline, but we were able to get this thing live without a lot of errors. It was a pretty incredible task. I appreciate that they took the project head-on. It was not easy for both sides, but they got through it with a lot of late nights and early mornings. You can appreciate a consultant who is willing to put in the extra time to make something successful, even if it’s a nearly impossible project. In the startup industry in Silicon Valley, it’s always like that, and UpTrending knows it and is willing to put in the extra effort to make things happen.

When working with consultancies, you always have delays and things of that nature, but we’re fairly happy with their ability to finish projects in a timely manner and within the budgeted number of hours that we agreed upon ahead of time.

What did you find most impressive about UpTrending?

At UpTrending, you’re not going to find the absolute best design & development resources but the team they do have is very good and efficient. However, for where we are as a business and where we need to be, they are the right fit for us. The work is high quality, it has the style that we need, and the brand is visually what we need to present. The development work is great as well; everything is not breaking and nor do we have to do a tremendous amount of QA to it. I think that’s important.

Are there any areas UpTrending could improve?

We will sometimes ask, “What do you think we should do with our website?” or “From a strategy perspective, what should our long-term roadmap be?” They struggle a little bit with the strategy angle in terms of giving us an idea of where we should be. I think it’s something that they recognize and that they’re working on, but that would be one area of improvement I would point out for them.

A lot of businesses don’t really need that when working with them, and I don’t think we really need it either, but their ability to provide that would definitely be an added benefit to clients and another revenue opportunity for them as well, which I think is important.