Made Tech

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Kjus is a sportswear brand. We design and market ski wear and golf wear in more than 30 countries worldwide.

What are your role and responsibilities?

I’m the global head of digital marketing and marketing communications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Made Tech?

Our online footprint was non-existent and our website outdated. We partnered with Made Tech to bring the digital presence and the website into the 21st century.  The goal was for Kjus to become a digital company end-to-end, to improve the consumer experience journey and to ensure the brand feel is consistent at every touch point, to ultimately deliver an integrated brand experience.  The first step was to launch a new responsive website with a mobile-first mindset that is m-commerce ready. Working with Made Tech helped us achieve that.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

Made Tech helped us to develop and launch the new responsive website www.kjus.com.

The website was built with a mobile-first mindset, focusing on making it content-rich and on a platform that is scalable and commerce-ready. The site is PHP based, uses Magento for the commerce-side and has a fully enabled PIM with is multi-country and multi-language functionality.

From a consumer perspective, the site isn’t divided into products and content.  The website is very integrated.  That’s a technical challenge that Made mastered really well. 
The Made team also worked really well with all third party vendors, for example, to integrate into the ERP system. And we’re now about to set up Salesforce with Made as well.

What was your process for selecting Made Tech to work with?

The went through a pitch process and won.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or a personnel work hour figure?

I can say that Kjus is a family owned business and resources are very limited and the budget is very small for a company marketing in more than 30 countries. The price in confidential, but it was very fair and I feel like we got outstanding value for the investment. 

How long did the project take?

We launched the website in less than four months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any stats or metrics to track improvement from the project?

Within the first month after launch we increased the number of sessions organically by +131%. You have to bear in mind that we didn’t yet invest into paid / SEM due to the limited budget available. That’s about to come for the coming months in select countries.  So we heavily focused on SEO as a first step and that takes a bit of time to fully kick in. Considering that, we are very happy with the increase in sessions.

The bounce rate decreased by -9% and the engagement / time on site increased by +23%. I can’t share any conversion goals because they are confidential, but we exceeded the goals set.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

Very happy.  They really helped us transform the business and remain our valued partner.  I would choose them again. They’re very professional and our teams can challenge each other in a very positive way to achieve the best result for the company. And, they’re fun to work with!

Is there anything unique or special about Made Tech that really makes them stand out compared to other business partners?

Well, yes, I have to say that I’ve never had such a smooth launch before and that they master agile development.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

I wish we would have started earlier and pushed for a bigger launch. But that’s nothing to do with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an online fashion brand, selling women’s wear clothing in the U.K.

What is your position?

I am the founder and chief executive officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address when you first approached Made Tech?

We were building a completely new website from scratch, and we really wanted to build something that was different from what was out there on the High Street. So, it was about creating a unique shopping experience. We did not have a website prior to this since we were a completely new business.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the actual scope of work assigned to them?

We took a very collaborative approach where we’d give them wireframes, and they would develop them, but in a very collaborative way. They would give us feedback, they would sometimes suggest alternatives, and they would come up with smart ways and smart solutions for things. But, they are not designers, so they didn’t do the design. We came to them with the graphic contents and they implemented them. 

What was your process for selecting Made Tech with which to work?

We wanted to go with Spree Commerce, but there were only two agencies in London specializing in that platform, so it was that expertise that brought them to our attention. 

What was the rationale in selecting Spree Commerce?

I think it was first a negative experience with Magento, and then developing an understanding of what the more modern sites are doing. That was the starting point, and the more we looked into Spree Commerce, the more we liked having a lean codebase for the long term. 

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

We’ve spent somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 working with Made Tech.

Is this an ongoing project or have you finished your work with Made Tech?

The project is ongoing. We’re still working with them to develop new features on the website.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

We’ve got a best-in-class conversion rate across multiple devices, so I think that’s testament to the fact the site works well. We are definitely seeing an increase in user traffic, but I guess that’s also related to our business strategy and not just their development. From a project management perspective, they’ve been very good. It’s been a very collaborative effort.

When working with Made Tech, is there anything that you would consider unique about their strategic approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

I really don’t have enough experience with other companies to answer that question. I do like how personable they are, and how well they can articulate their deep subject matter expertise to me in ways I'll actually understand. 

What advice, if any, would you give to a future client of theirs?

I think the better you can lay out your project objectives at the very beginning, the better the work that they can deliver. Each time you change or customize the project after development begins, the more likely you are to encounter barriers that results in delays. 

BACKGROUND

Please provide a description of your company. 

The client is a running shoe company called On. The brand is less than five years old, and we’re sold through running specialist stores. We have around 1,700 stores selling our products across 25 markets at the moment. Three years ago, we decided to push online and see if that could become an important sales channel for us.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I head up the e-commerce team and all our online efforts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Made Tech?

We had two websites that we wanted to merge into one big shared system. We had a website and a really basic Web shop at the time, and we wanted to bring storytelling around the brand, together with a full e-commerce setup. We hadn’t linked it properly to any CRM [customer relationship management], we didn’t have any CMS [content management system] system either. So, we went to them to help us build our entire e-commerce setup.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

Made Tech is a very knowledgeable partner, particularly in Ruby on RAILS framework. They gave us confidence that an open-source platform would be the way forward. We have both our ERP [enterprise resource planning] and our CRM based in Salesforce, which is also quite a customizable platform that wasn’t so easy to plug and play with. They fully customized our e-commerce and Salesforce integration.

What was your process for selecting Made Tech with which to work?

I wasn’t part of that selection process that happened just before I started. Generally, we wanted a technology partner that could help us build a platform with new technology. Although we have a more stable setup with Salesforce, we’re very open to more of an agile environment when it comes to the website. That’s what I appreciate a lot about Made Tech, they’re on the cutting edge in terms of agile development and open source.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics, metrics, or general feedback to show the success of the project?

For being engineers, they’re extremely well organized. They would use JIRA as a project management tool, and a few others as well. That’s particularly where they’re quite strong, in being project managers. Transparency is quite high, as we have both access to JIRA, and we can add tasks to be completed. We get full transparency via that tool into how it’s fixed, how long it takes, and who was involved. They’re extremely responsive and always pick up our calls. We talk both over Skype and over the phone. Outside of the urgent tasks that come in, we work in sprints with them. Since I had experience with that before, I think that has been a good setup for us from a transparency point of view, but also in efficiency. They’re really good at meeting deadlines overall, and I’m very happy working with them.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

There are always areas where you can do better but, overall, we are very happy.