iid

Please describe your company and your position there.

My Wine Guide's software platform reimagines how consumers engage with wine lists: restaurant, wine store, winery and online, and select, order and buy wine. With AI-enabled technology, My Wine Guide powers the 21st Century wine list and retail wine experience for over 4,000 restaurants and 1,500 retail locations. My Wine Guide aims to breakdown the barriers between wine consumers and remarkable wine and food centered experiences wherever consumers happen to be. My Wine Guide's patent pending technology personalizes each and every customer interaction with a restaurant wine list or retail inventory. Wine novices select wine without intimidation, and more experienced wine drinkers explore new wines confidently. With My Wine Guide, restaurants and retailers increase their wine related revenue and provide an enhanced customer experience. As a SaaS platform, My Wine Guide is priced on a subscription basis. I am Managing Partner

For what projects/services did your company hire iid?

A full range of digital marketing content development and creative: our website, ads, marketing collateral, presentation templates and banner displays.

What were your goals for this project?

Educate potential customers

How did you select iid?

Referred to us.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

See above

What was the team composition?

Worked closely with the Principal - Matt Bennett

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

I could not be more satisfied with the deliverables and outcome and found working with Matt a pleasure.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The work with the team was excellent

What did you find most impressive about this company?

creative content development and execution

Are there any areas for improvement?

I think Matt and Co had a bit of an unanticipated learning curve with Square Space however this never really became an issue.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I head up the marketing team at an education technology company. We have a communication platform that teachers can use in the classroom and administrators can use with their entire school and district communities.

For what projects/services did your company hire iid?

Microsite and landing page template design

What were your goals for this project?

These landing pages were the flagship assets of our campaign. We have continued to iterate and update the pages with new content to keep them as fresh as possible for our customers and prospects.

How did you select iid?

I had worked with iiD before on some website design and other digital campaign assets.

Describe the project in detail.

We were building out a campaign to specifically reach school and district administrators that involved a microsite landing page and individual school/district landing pages for 100K+ schools.

We worked with iiD to help us design the microsite landing page as well as the individual organization page templates. We did the development of those pages in-house.

What was the team composition?

We worked with 2 designers on the iiD side and we had 3 members of the marketing team at Remind working on content, development and overall campaign management.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We launched the microsite and landing pages back in 2019 and they are still properties that we drive traffic to today.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was fairly smooth. We were operating on a short timeline that they were able to accommodate.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I've always appreciated their creativity and adaptability to customer needs. There are no shortage of changes and ambiguous requirements that come up with design work. They always worked with us to make sure we were happy with the end result.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing is top of mind in terms of areas for improvement.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Futures Without Violence is a national nonprofit that works on advocacy, programming, prevention, work, and public awareness campaigns. All of our work is centered around ending violence against women and children. 

We have offices in San Francisco, Boston, and Washington DC, and staff from across the country too. I’m a program manager and in my role, I often create websites and help with awareness campaigns, among other things.

What challenge were you trying to address with iid?

We had a federal grant in the department that I was previously part of and it’s called public education campaigns and programs. I’m in a different department now, so my role has shifted slightly. The federal grant was called That’s Not Cool.

The website that we had at the time was created back in 2009 and it was targeted at a teenage audience. Our platform was significantly outdated and difficult to use. When we brought in iid, it was to help us reenvision our school website so that it would be something that young people would access. We wanted the platform to feature all the resources around learning about healthy relationships. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with a significant discovery process where we met students from a variety of public schools and high schools in the San Francisco area to learn more about what they need in terms of content and what they’d be interested in.  The second phase of the discovery was all about iid helping us create a user journey so that we could see how students could be brought into the educational process through the website. 

After that, they went into the design portion of the project which included creating wireframes and three different types of website design. Once those things were established, we proceeded to decide what platform we were going to use and what kind of content we were going to put out on the website. 

Then, the iid team started developing our site, and we worked with them to populate and test it. Following that, we launched the website through a variety of online events. iid also developed a number of redesigned pages for other websites, but the biggest thing that they redesigned was our organizational homepage and our program sub-pages.

All of the websites they built for us were in WordPress. The team also built a mobile app for teenagers, and it was available for iOS and Android. 

What is the team composition?

We closely worked with Matt (Founder & Creative Director) and Lance (Former VP Design & Partner).

How did you come to work with iid?

We found iid through word-of-mouth recommendation. We went to meet with my previous boss who had a friend of a friend that worked with a design company. When we met them, they told us that the best company to work with was iid.

iid was just starting and small at the time, and we fell in love with their energy and proposal because it was beyond creative and anything else we’d seen. When we did the RFP process, iid definitely stood out above the crowd. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $60,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with the team from January 2015–January 2018.

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

We received the Webby Awards and the Communicator Awards in the charitable organization or nonprofit category because of iid’s excellent work. We were also honored because of our platform at several other community awards. Moreover, when the website was launched, we received a lot of traffic and traction. 

Then, for the organizational home page they developed, they were able to take it to another level. It became more accessible to the public and they were able to do good work even if it was geared towards an adult audience. Overall, iid was flexible and could work with different audiences when developing several websites. 

How did iid perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Basecamp as our project management tool, and we communicated through emails and in-person meetings. We kept in touch throughout the process.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed that iid went through the discovery phase with us and they were genuinely curious. Moreover, Matt and Lance were super attentive and helped us figure out how to solve problems, and we consider them exceptional partners.

What stood out the most was iid's phenomenal design skills. They did a great job of creating a beautiful and functional website while remaining focused on how the platform could be great for the audiences we were seeking to reach. Above all, they listened to our needs, and that was the reason why we won so many awards. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Our webmaster told us that our website was hard to update, and takes a lot of server space because it was such a complex website. That caused us a few pain points after the launch of the website, and it also cost a lot to maintain. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Engage with them in the discovery process because companies often don’t take that opportunity. A really big part of our success was that we worked through that process intentionally and that’s what made it as strong as it was. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of Visus LLC, and we are a digital transformation company that specializes in software, web development, mobile apps, digital marketing, and digital strategies.

What challenge were you trying to address with iid?

I’ve known and worked with Matt (Founder & Creative Director) and the team at iid for about 15 years and I hired them to design and develop three website projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

iid was responsible for the creative conceptualization, UI/UX wireframe design, development, coding, and programming of our website projects. They were also responsible for its integration to a CMS platform, documentation, and support for maintenance and upgrades. The websites were built on WordPress, and they provide full back- and frontend support.

The websites they developed were for food clients from when I was working at an ad agency. They were required to build custom features such as AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), a custom-built recipe database, calendaring system, an event system, and ultimately a blog function. All three sites were integrated with third-party off-the-shelf APIs.

What is the team composition?

For the development and design phase, it took half a dozen members from iid, and four on my team including myself.

How did you come to work with iid?

We initially got involved on a project basis for a casino client. We were looking for a new blogging site for a local casino, and at that point in time, I was a local in Santa Barbara, California so they were close by.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $500,000 over the course of our engagement.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from May 2009-August 2018.

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

For one of our clients, their organic search traffic has increased by approximately 30% over the last three years — we attribute that success to the site development. We also noticed that the bounce rate on their website has improved by 20% in the same interval.

Additionally, the time spent by users on pages per session across all sites has improved by 25%.

How did iid perform from a project management standpoint?

In all three cases, they performed very well, and delivered on budget and on time. They used SharePoint and a few other platforms, but they had their own custom project management tool that they built out.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were most impressed by their creativity, which was found in both their design and approach to the feature and function requirements. Sometimes, clients want a particular function that may not be clearly defined in their own minds. iid did a great job in terms of turning the client’s request into a technical solution that supports the user experience.

Moreover, their overall design is just excellent. The creative concept into the actual design execution yielded very good UI/UX for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t have any real improvement points to offer. As you can tell I’ve used them several times and I would use them again, but I’m in a different position now.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You have to clearly define the project and complete a discovery process. The discovery refers to finding the scope, the feature, and the functional requirements that the project entails. Having a well-defined discovery process prior to the engagement helps iid understand what you want, what your budget and timelines are, what your audience looks like, and what your expectations are.

Additionally, you should also know your clear definition of success. As somebody who might approach iid, how do you measure success? All of that should be done with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a brand strategy firm located in San Francisco. I’m the CEO of the company and represent a lot of different B2B and B2C clients as they prepare their brand for positioning and I help them to go to market.

What challenge were you trying to address with iid?

We hired iid as our creative arm, and we bring them in when we have creative projects. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

iid is running our ads and developing websites for our external stakeholders. They also help with marketing, branding,  and content development. Their branding work involves creating logos.

What is the team composition?

We work a lot with Matt (Founder & Creative Director), and everything we do goes through him. Then, he brings in the team we need. 

How did you come to work with iid?

I worked with iid before, and they were smart, efficient, professional, and had a limited amount of ego.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2015, and it’s ongoing. Our first project was completed in 2016. 

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

They’re very excellent to work with, and we’ve been extraordinarily happy.  Matt gets us — he has a similar approach to us and we stay steadfast to that. Our external stakeholders like their team's work and they like to pay for it.

How did iid perform from a project management standpoint?

They have an exceptional project management process, and it’s one of the things they continue to do very well. Our company knows exactly where we need to be and be able to function accordingly. We mainly communicate with iid through phone calls, emails, and meetings. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Iid is smart, creative, and professional. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I wish there were more of them. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Let iid do their work and interact with them. When you do hire them, know that you're hiring good people. Most importantly, know that Matt and his team are supersensitive to understanding client needs. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I worked for an energy drink in Japan where I was in charge of all the owned and managed media, as well as the digital channels for the brand. Our company is the best-selling and largest energy drink in the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with iid?

We were working on an event in which we were trying to link a consumer promotion. We wanted to make people understand how grueling and difficult the event was, so we worked with iid to create a digital version of that experience.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with iid to create and develop a video game version of the ski-jump race event. 

Initially, we gave them the brief so they can come back to us with some ideas to execute in a fun way. They came back with a finger-tapping game, and a few examples of other web-based games to utilize this interface or technology. We had quite a strong sophistication for it to be available on mobile devices first, because more than 80% of our traffic in Japan comes from mobile. In addition, they also had to come up with the basic mechanics of how the game was going to work using HTML5.

They also had to do all the concept designs, which involved some illustrations that were created to work in a web-based game environment. There was also a leaderboard function that we did in the second year of the project — they handled all the backend development for that. We ended up with a browser game that had to fit within our website's framework. A mobile app would’ve been an easier task because there would’ve been a lot more flexibility. On the web, you’re limited to what the CMS and the hosting can do, and also whatever limitations HTML will have.

Users had to tap furiously on their phones to make their character run up the hill — The steeper the hill, the more furious you had to tap. Through this game, they could understand the difficulty of this event, and understand some basic facts surrounding it. Users can win prizes or a chance to visit the event, depending on the scores they achieved in the game.

They worked with a lot of freelance creatives and developers. They brought them all together to manage the project. A lot of the individual contributors come from their network.

What is the team composition?

I worked primarily with two folks from their company. One is Matt (Founder & Creative Director), and the other is Lance (VP Design & Partner), who I believe is no longer with the company.

How did you come to work with iid?

I knew Lance during his time in Japan and we just kept in touch. We were looking for someone who could develop this app quickly, and at a reasonable price — which was certainly something we were not going to get if we went with a local partner. We went with iid because we trusted them, and they were flexible and fast.

How much have you invested with them?

We probably spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January–May 2018. May was the Go Live Date and the time when things wrapped up.

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

We basically had three main KPIs for the game. One was attracting a more national audience in order to create more awareness, the second one was reaching a younger audience, and the last one was to get good engagement from the people that played the game. We were able to see the results from the first two KPIs. I don’t recall the actual number of people that engaged with the game, but it did over-deliver in all of those points.

How did iid perform from a project management standpoint?

iid was solid in terms of managing the project. They had clear estimates, there were no creeping costs, and the communication was good. If there were any minus points, it’s because they’re working with external resources from their organization — so we experienced some delays which caused some scheduling issues. Potentially, that can happen anywhere, but because they have the flexibility of working with a lot of different types of resources, they still made it work.

I believe we used Smartsheet for the tracking of the overall schedule. Other than that, we used some tools from Google such as Slides, as we were going through early iterations. There was quite a time difference between Japan and the US, so we had a lot of things to go over through email and digital means, because we weren’t able to talk live in-person.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think they punch above their weight if I’m being honest. They’re small and scrappy — in a good way. They’re more flexible and more competitive from a cost and time turnaround point of view compared to other vendors.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s much that they could’ve improved on. There was one time that they had to change a person partway through the project, but it wasn’t a huge inconvenience — though it wasn’t ideal either. Other than that, I can’t think of anything on how they could’ve changed that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Because iid can approach the challenge from a lot of different angles, my advice would be to give them creative freedom in the beginning, and you might get something more than what you’re expecting.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a media planning and buying agency headquartered in Oakland, California.

What challenge were you trying to address with iid?

We needed a new brand identification work. After that, we also wanted the brand new identity to be applied on our new website. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

For the brand ideation, they assisted us in the development of a new look and feel for our brand. Then, they translated that into collateral pieces — a new PowerPoint design and an updated WordPress website. For the site, the team created and designed our platform from scratch. 

What is the team composition?

We mainly worked with a project manager and two developers. Our project manager also served as our designer. We also collaborated with a copywriter. 

How did you come to work with iid?

They were referred to us by a third-party and at that time, it was critical for us to make a decision quickly. We were brought four candidates and we just hit it off with iid. We liked that their team was highly interested in telling a visual story and that's just what we needed for our website. 

How much have you invested with them?

We probably spent $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2018–January 2020.

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

The quality of their work was very good. There were a few mistakes made in the process, but we had consistent check-ins, so there were no surprises. For results, our website was not for selling, so we didn’t have any metrics attached to it. 

Overall, our stakeholders’ feedback was very positive in the sense that the site had gone from a flat feeling to having a young and energetic vibe. That’s what mattered the most — since we wanted to pivot from an old company to a new one. 

How did iid perform from a project management standpoint?

The project was done on time and on budget. We didn’t use any tools to manage the project, but perhaps they did that internally. Overall, they were responsive. We also liked the fact that we worked with their CEO, and he really took a personal hand in every project. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were calm and very averse to drama — I appreciated that. iid had a very sober and thoughtful process, and we responded well to that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They were less technically capable in collateral development such as PowerPoint, letterheads, and more. However, they had strong skills in developing digital assets primarily for websites. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

With iid, all the still waters run deep and you have to be patient and listen to the logic that they offer. They have solid and thoughtful reasoning.