Isadora Agency

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

Isadora Agency has been fantastic. They exceeded expectations at every turn. They've been great, and we will continue to use them as an ongoing vendor for our site. There are really no areas for improvement that I've seen. The work they delivered has been exceptional, and we’ve gotten great feedback. They hit on everything we wanted, and I recommend them wholeheartedly.

How did Isadora Agency perform from a project management standpoint?

Michael has been a great project manager up to this point. He is detail oriented and follows up. Typically, I email or call them. The dashboard they use for their clients is helpful, especially for reviewing designs and providing feedback. Our project has evolved into a daily scrum over the past couple of weeks as we've approached launch. They've done a great job sticking to the timeline.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Overall, the process was pretty great. Our company has historically struggled to articulate our brand. It was very serendipitous that Isadora Agency took on this project, which is much broader than just putting content within established brand guidelines online. They concretized our brand in an appealing way, and I was very impressed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I highly suggest deliberating with them. We spent a lot of time with them on the design concept. It probably took more time than they anticipated, but that process helped us generate the best ideas possible and yield a product we're very happy with.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It went over very well. We vetted it through many key stakeholders. Before it was even finalized, we had a lot of buy-in and input. We had everyone’s stamp of approval from all across functional teams.

How did Isadora Agency perform from a project management standpoint?

I wouldn’t say excellent, but it’s good. They have a dashboard. It’s like a tracking tool where you can see what open projects you have and where they stand. The creative team was really easy to work with. They understood feedback and were able to take it and run with it without having a million questions at every turn. There wasn’t too much handholding, which was nice. They’re very easy to work with.

What distinguishes Isadora Agency from other providers?

They’re very creative and insightful when it comes to digital advertising. It’s a big strong point of theirs.

Is there anything Isadora Agency could have improved or done differently?

They can improve on project management. Some of the communication style could be worked on. Some of the showcasing of our work, with our permission, could be improved on.

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

Thanks to Isadora, our site now allows us to position ourselves as a thought leader in the education market. We had multiple compliments, not just internally but externally, on the site design and how it really reflects our company. This is a big deal given how much the company has changed in the last 11 months. It's definitely a big upgrade for us.

I'll tell you a story and this might give an insight into it. Our software is interesting in that we sell to schools and school districts, but most of our users are parents, teachers, and students. We have a mobile app with a parent portal and a student portal. People can go in and check their grades and their assignments. Parents can see if their child attended a class. If a child didn't attend a class, the parents would get a notification. Parents and students usually Google PowerSchool because they're looking for the login.

When we launched the new site, we put a button in the top right-hand corner that said: “Get started.” It was us trying to make it easy for schools and districts to say, “Hey, I'm interested in PowerSchool. I want to learn more about you guys.” So we had a contact forum up there with instructions. Instead, the link gets flooded with requests from parents saying, “I don't know how to log in,” or “I forgot my password.” That flooded our sales team and support, so we immediately started experimenting and testing to see how we could improve this. We built a parent and student resource center as well as a teacher resource center. We made a “Get started” page where people needed to pick an option: “I'm a parent or student,” “I'm a teacher,” or “I'm interested in purchasing PowerSchool Solutions or learning more about PowerSchool Solutions.”

That immediately dropped the number of requests from parents. After the change, they were able to find the information that they were looking for in the first place. It was interesting for us because if we hadn't done this project and the site was designed the way it was, we wouldn't know how many parents are actually coming to our site and how many students are coming to our site. Isadora’s design helped us increase the accuracy of our leads and increase conversion rates because we're basically getting rid of the fake leads that are coming in. It decreased the volume for our support team because people are finding the information they need. It's also helped our clients find the information they need, like how to reset a password. That seems so simple, but it's so effective. 

They're very good at design, but they're also good at delivering a functioning website. Those are the 2 things that we want. They really took into account our users and helping us to drive lead generation. They tackled the problems we wanted then to tackle very well. I had also been involved in another project that was created in WordPress and I have to say that they are very clean with their coding and very clean with their setup. You don't necessarily see somebody else's backend of their WordPress, but they've done a very good job of it. That is good and a compliment to them.

How does Isadora perform from a project management standpoint?

They're fabulous. They're clear about telling you when the deadlines are on the whole. They give you a dashboard and they set a milestone for the project. Once you get something given to you, you have 48 hours to turn it around and give it back to them for feedback or changes. They're very clear. They know how long it's going to take them to do something. They know to remind you of deadlines and say, “If you miss this deadline, here's the impact of that.” Also, they say, “If you're in the middle of a project and you decide to go a totally different way, that's great and that's okay. Projects can have flexibility, but the effect is going to be X, Y, and Z.”

They're some of the most persistent people that I've met, and that's meant to be a compliment. It helps you as a customer that you don't have to monitor the project yourself. You can count on them to tell you you're missing something, you need this, or this task is yours. A lot of delays were largely due to us, such as the difficulty of trying to get 3 VPs together in a room because of their schedules. If somebody's away for a whole week, that sucks for your project but there's nothing you can do. That was more on our end than on their end.

What did you find most impressive about Isadora?

They're very good at listening to the feedback from the customer. They're not afraid to go back to the drawing board. The first design that came out for our homepage, we said, “This does not reflect our company. We don't like this at all.” They took everything and listened to what we said. They turned around and gave us a totally different design. We said, “Yes, that's it. That's better. That felt more along the lines of what we are as a company; who we are as a company.” That obviously is a big one when you're designing the entire face of the website.

That's one example, but there are multiple ones where we were said, “No, we don't like this,” and they went back based on our feedback. That is so valuable because if you're working with a company that doesn't listen to you, then you're going to get very frustrated. You're also probably going to end up with something that doesn't have as much value. That's one thing about them that made a big difference.

I trust them to deliver what I want, to listen to what I want, and to deliver quality. Trust is a big issue when signing a big contract. It just depends on the size of the site and what you're looking for. They're great people. They're patient and they listen. They're honest with you. They're going to tell you what's going on and what's not going on. That sort of transparency is valuable in building trust with somebody who’s building a large digital asset for your site.

Are there any areas Isadora could improve ?

It's funny you say that. The only thing I'd say is that while their proposal was good, it wasn't as good as some of the others we got. That’s in terms of detailing what's actually involved in the project in terms of timeline and major deliverables. Alex, who runs the company, actually went around and asked for feedback from a bunch of people on the proposal. I'm sure they have changed it since then since that was a few months ago.