Last Call Media

What was the scope of their involvement?

After we hired Last Call, the three leads came to meet our team, see the museum in person, and start the discovery process.  They interviewed a large group of our staff members, including senior management, to try and understand our culture and goals. Our team filled out a questionnaire about who we are, what we wanted, and what we expected from the site, and Last Call took all those answers into consideration during the first phase.  Instead of building on the old site, they designed entirely new wireframes and concepts for the Drupal site.

We wanted something simple, clean, and that would highlight our museum’s artwork through an image-heavy layout. We collaborated extensively with them, and they built the site in about five months, since we needed it finished before our launch in August. Last Call did all of the technical work and we provided the content creation.

The search function on the old site was pretty much unusable, but it functions far better on the new site and is much smarter and more intuitive.  Last Call also created an events calendar, which is a vast improvement from what we had before.

The site has launched, but Last Call continues to make minor changes and tweaks. We don’t technically have a service contract with them, but we plan on partnering again for a new dev project, and Last Call is committed to maintaining a positive relationship.

What is the team dynamic?

I met the senior producer, the UX designer, and the art director, but I don't know how many developers work for them.

How did you come to work with Last Call Media?

We went through a nationwide RFP process but weren’t expecting to work with an out-of-state company. However, Last Call’s proposal looked so good that we had to do an interview with them, even though they’re two time zones away. We started with nine companies and selected four for in-person demos, and Last Call were good listeners and problem-solvers. Plus, their price was highly competitive, so we chose them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We had our first meeting in February and the site launched in August.

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we moved to Drupal, many facets of our website were development but weren't quite up to my standards. When we started working with Last Call Media, they provided a lot of cleanup work. That involves making the user interface friendlier to users and content managers. They are also helping to clean up URL structures and getting permissions on the backend fixed. The team has also helped develop some additional functionalities and helped with SEO for the site.

As an example of their more complex work, we have around 30 active users. We have to be careful about who has access to each part of the site. Last Call media has helped us to figure out the groups and how we're going to leverage those to be more effective. When the site was originally created, this part of it was not very well thought through.

Additionally, the site was originally set up so that title tags would generate URL structures, leaving us with URLs that were over 300 characters long. We're planning to change that with Last Call Media and update all of our current URL, which is an intense project.They have helped us develop some modules and strategic processes to help us figure out how we’re going to do that as efficiently as possible without breaking links on our site currently.

What is the team dynamic?

Based on the type of project that they’re working on, they pull in team members as needed. I work primarily with 4 people, but there have been 2-3 additional people as needed.

How did you come to work with Last Call Media?

I met Last Call representative at a conference. I liked how they worked. I did a follow-up phone call and found out they could fit our need. We had a couple of other companies come in and present with us. Last Call had great experience with Drupal, including the day to day operation side of it, which is what we really were needing. We already had the strategic look at Drupal covered, but we needed people that could actually dig in and say, “This is how we need to make Drupal work to accomplish your goals.”

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested between $50,000-$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February of this year, and the work is ongoing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Last Call Media was outsourced for helping us with the initial development of the website's Drupal infrastructure. Last Call Media took part in everything from the discovery process, through to the planning and development. We handled the design internally, also taking care of the content architecture. Last Call Media worked within our pace, in order to get those elements taken care of. It was a collaborative effort, with Last Call Media taking care of all technical efforts.

We built a way of presenting all available university majors, minors, PhDs, and so on. For each area of study, we showed all the available degrees that a student could enroll for. In order to pull all the content in the format that we needed, from a design standpoint, we needed to build an API which connected the front-end to the back-end. It was an impressive piece of technology.

Last Call Media helped us restrict the types of content we were creating. Based on their previous higher education clients, they helped us avoid creating too many types of content, which would have become hard to manage over time.

Last Call Media assigned up to 5 individuals at peak capacity, including 4 developers (2 senior) and a project manager. We met with all of the resources beforehand in order to understand their approach and vision. At the project start, we already knew everyone who would be involved with the project.

How did you come to work with Last Call Media?

We reviewed 3 candidates, with their location being the main factor. I wanted to work with a development company in our area so that we could have in-person meetings. We didn't look outside of Massachusetts, but we found 3 good options in the Boston area, as well as Last Call Media, in North Hampton. We offered each candidate the same opportunities to present their services and understand what we wanted to build. We looked at each company's portfolio, talked to their past clients, ultimately selecting Last Call Media based on their experience and passion. The other partners had a more out-of-the-box approach; they weren't as agile and adaptable to our needs. At that point, we had more of a concept, so we needed some flexibility from the developer's side in changing our path and adding things that we hadn't considered. Last Call Media has a relatively young team, which could work with us long-term.

How much have you invested with Last Call Media?

The cost of Last Call Media's services was in the low 6-figure range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Last Call Media in July 2015, with an initial discovery process for the technologies we would be using. The planning stage and development started in the winter of 2015. Our minimum viable product was built in June 2016, after which we had 2-3 additional sprints of one week each, and a training period for our internal team. Our goal was to manage code for ourselves. The site was launched in August 2016.

Last Call Media has remained a consulting partner for us. We go to them whenever we are unsure of how something should be built. Last Call Media will either handle the coding or guide us in implementing the necessary changes. We've made many improvements since the site was launched, creating new features, content types, and views.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Last Call Media helped us deepen our technical base for the launch of our Drupal site. They assigned developers and talked us through what our choices were in terms of architecture and launching our site. They did some development work and a lot of bug fixes, as well as adding new features to our site. During the transition, they added custom modules to our Drupal instance such as a connection to our API for our credit card vendor. This was extremely helpful. Previously, we were doing that in PHP and whatnot on our old web server. We don't really have a service level agreement with them, so our goal is to give them things that aren’t super time sensitive so they can fit them in when they can. We handle a lot of troubleshooting and coding internally.

How did you come to work with Last Call Media?

Last Call Media was recommended to us by our cloud hosting vendor, Acquia. We have several other vendors who do work on the site occasionally. In addition, we had a different vendor that did the actual implementation and building of our site. We’re using Last Call Media as a backup to make sure that the technical side is handled as well as the design side.

How much have you invested with Last Call Media?

We purchased a set number of retainer hours and we’re about to buy more. For the development work on the payment module and pre-launch preparation we purchased a sprint. Since then, we’ve worked off of retainer hours.

What is the status of this engagement?

Last Call Media started working with us in late March or April of 2016.