Majestic

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the IT director of a nonprofit regulatory authority. I'm in charge of the IT department within the organization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Majestic?

Majestic originally built our website and hosted it in their domain and database. The project I led involved migrating the website to our own database.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Majestic helped us migrate our website hosting to our own account and database. The entire migration was done virtually.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager and an IT person. Additionally, John (VP of Client Strategy) was also involved in the project.

How did you come to work with Majestic?

Majestic was already our existing service provider for website development. When we realized that we wanted to host this website under our own account instead of through their account, we asked them for a quote. They proposed a good timeline and budget, so we went ahead with the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on this particular project from January–March 2024.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Majestic completed the website migration satisfactorily. The website worked well after the migration, so the quality of their work was very good.

How did Majestic perform from a project management standpoint?

Majestic stayed on budget. However, as for the project timeline, they had to postpone the project for a bit. I believe they were lacking capacity and had high-priority tasks to address. Other than that, everything went well. We communicated via email, and we also leveraged Microsoft Teams for our meetings.

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

They were all very good. The project manager was very responsive and always replied on time whenever we sent her an email. The IT person was very knowledgeable about what he was doing. Moreover, John was the one who offered us the proposal for this project, which was very good as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Majestic's communication was impressive, as they were very responsive to my emails. Moreover, as mentioned, the IT person was very good at what he was doing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't have any complaints about their work.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Be very transparent and open, and if there's any issue, bring it up immediately to get their attention. Whenever there's a concern, bring it up to them in a timely manner so that there's no delays and they can accommodate it and work on it.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior digital marketing manager for a global food company. We sell retail products, like grocery stores, and food service products, like French fries, which we’re most famous for.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Majestic?

Once we had a brand book, we wanted to bring it to life and reinvent our current site, which wasn’t mobile-friendly and had an aged design. We needed someone to work with our internal development team, which made the project more challenging than just building the site themselves. We needed someone strong in communication, project management, and design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Recently, Majestic helped us relaunch our Canadian brand website. We initially engaged them to do visual concepts for us. We picked one of those, and they blew it out to design all the other parts of the site. They also did some research and brought new elements, like ratings and ways to cross-populate information. 

Then, Majestic helped us design the content around it by picking our best images and recipes. They also showed us how to better highlight things, like putting sustainability in our top header. Majestic worked with us to ensure the designs were faithfully implemented, working hand-in-hand with our internal development team to bring the site to life.

Since then, Majestic has done additional tasks like designing landing pages and campaign hubs within the site. For example, there’s a page on air frying with a recipe guide that shows how the air fryer works. They’ve done other products’ landing page designs for new launches, so they’ve done a lot of product management and liaising with our development team.

Separately, we worked with Majestic on a brand-new site in September 2023. In one month, they went from the design concept to a fully functional site, managing both the site’s design and development for an appetizer line with onion rings and cheese sticks. They built the backend on WordPress and used Adobe XD to send the files, collaborate, and track comments.

What is the team composition?

Brandi-Lee (VP of Operations) is our project manager, and Christopher (VP Creative Director) is our creative lead. Behind them is a team of 5–10 developers and designers working on our program. However, we only interface with John (VP of Client Strategy), Brandi-Lee, and Christopher, so we’ve never met the others.

How did you come to work with Majestic?

I previously worked with them at another company. Majestic was great; they were fast, efficient, and competitive in their pricing. Moreover, they weren’t a huge company where we had to meet with a project manager. We could email them and get a response in an hour to help us solve the issue.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $50,000 CAD (approximately $36,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in November 2022 and did the designs in 2023. Currently, they host sites for us, build new creative, and are our go-to company for any web projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve doubled our engagement. From the bounce rate to the amount of pages consumed, our new site is much more engaging, which helps retain people. 

Moreover, the site represents our brand much better. Although it’s hard to quantify, it makes our brand look more professional and modern. We do brand tracking every year, and even though it’s a mix of advertising, social media, and everything else, we’ve seen improved brand scores; the website plays a part in that.

Overall, Majestic is exceptional. I’d never done a review for a company, but they’re my secret sauce. I also use them in another company, so I brought them into the game.

How did Majestic perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very upfront and reasonable. If somebody senior has an idea at the last minute and we want to add something, they tell us of the incremental cost and ask us to sign off on it. Overall, Majestic is very transparent; they stay within the budget unless we approve an overage.

We mainly communicate over email. Whenever we need to jump on a call, they make themselves available immediately.

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

Christopher is amazing and incredibly fast. Some creative directors are very precious about their ideas, but he’s a collaborative, friendly, calm guy.

Additionally, Brandi-Lee is outstanding. We’ve done many web projects with different agencies, but she’s the best we’ve worked with. She follows up on things and keeps us on track.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their speed is outstanding; they’re incredibly agile. If you go to a big agency for similar work, it takes them six months to get somewhere. In a month, Majestic did a whole website from concept to launch, including test logic. Overall, Majestic goes above and beyond in many instances.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’re great. I wish they could do our development work because they’re faster than our internal team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Majestic won’t shoot your recipes for you or do lifestyle photography. They work well if you have a brand book to work off and explore ideas and concepts, so you must have a good sense of your brand and creative direction. Then, Majestic can really run with it.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the operation manager at Merlan Scientific, a company selling science and educational equipment to Canada’s education and other industries. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Majestic?

Our old website was outdated, not user-friendly, and it gave us problems with our checkout process, conversion rates, and others. Because of that, we wanted a more modern site to improve our sales. 

The COVID-19 pandemic had significantly impacted our business. Our primary customers were schools that transitioned to online learning, so there wasn’t as much demand for our products. We were looking to invest in digital marketing to grow our revenue. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Majestic has built our Shopify website, and they’ve found various plug-ins for our platform that can help with our business needs. We wanted to maintain some of our old website’s look, and they studied our old site to see what could be copied. However, the new site has been developed from scratch. 

First, we presented Majestic with what we were looking to achieve in our website’s look and feel. They came back with some recommended templates, and I picked what I liked based on its aesthetics. 

We carry over 10,000 products, and Majestic told us that that was too much to put on our website. I reviewed our offerings, and I found that we had thousands of products that we had never sold in the past 5–6 years. They were still available to our customers, but it didn’t make sense to upload 10,000 products on our site when 5,000 of them weren’t active SKUs. 

We modified our assortment and only included what made sense for our business. Still, the amount involved required a lot of work from Majestic’s end. After that, they conducted user acceptance testing, and they were very good at going back and fixing things for us as we gave them new information.

Majestic has already completed most of the development work, and the site is about to go live.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with John (Client Strategy VP), who has conducted the initial groundwork to figure out our needs. Their creative lead and head developer are my primary contacts, and there has been another developer on our conference calls and email threads. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $10,000 CAD (approximately $8,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2020, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Overall, I’m pleased with Majestic’s work — they’ve put together a good website. Our new site is much better compared to our old platform. 

In addition, Majestic is good at bringing their expertise to the table, which is helpful for someone like me who doesn’t have a lot of marketing resources. 

How did Majestic perform from a project management standpoint?

Majestic has stuck to our budget, and our communication has been excellent. If I send an email request, they’re good at responding very quickly. They acknowledge emails, and their follow-up comes within a reasonable timeline. 

We communicate through Google Meet and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Majestic has worked with our relatively smaller budget, and they’re really good at helping us find solutions. Additionally, I’m happy with their communication and responsiveness. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could’ve been more intuitive about improvements rather than having me initiate changes all the time. They could’ve also been more proactive with their work instead of being reactive to my requests. That said, my experience with Majestic hasn’t been different from my experience with other developers. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Set your expectations with timelines and other things up front, and make sure they understand your business. Give them as much information as you can about your business so they can do their thing and work their magic. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a Canadian bank with retail operations in a number of countries, and we’re heavily focused in Latin America and the Caribbean. We have football sponsorship programs in Latin America. It’s very similar to what we do in Canada with hockey. I’m a senior manager in global media and marketing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Majestic?

We were building a campaign website. Our internal IT team is focused on building apps and websites that enable online banking and other services. Majestic fills the gap when it comes to websites for marketing campaigns and contests. This enables our internal team to focus its expertise on security and service-delivery.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Majestic developed a marketing website with a look and feel matching that of our bank.

What is the team composition?

The team size varies depending on our need on any given task. For the projects I’ve been involved with, the team size has been 3–4 people.

How did you come to work with Majestic?

They were a current vendor, and I appreciated their understanding of both coding and marketing. My first connection with them was on this project, which had begun when I started my position at the bank. I had a vision for revamping the site and making it more user-friendly and engaging. During that time, I came to learn that Majestic wasn’t just a coding team, they really knew how to engage people.

How much have you invested with them?

The annual cost varies from $500,000–$1,000,000 CAD (approximately $379,100–$758,200 USD) across all our projects with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them since about March 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Majestic has handled several campaign-focused projects, centered around websites we’ve built for sports contests. The campaigns have all exceeded expectations. They build sites and provide feedback on UX, but there’s also a media and marketing team behind our success.

How did Majestic perform from a project management standpoint?

The standard protocol for a Majestic project is to start with an initial briefing from me through email or phone. We follow that up with a more formal discussion on specifications. Majestic will return with a comprehensive specifications document that outlines the features, timelines, and costs.

Then, they’ll usually assign a dedicated project manager. I’ve mainly worked with one project manager, except for one instance when she was on leave. Having a single point of contact is great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re diligent in reminding us when we need to provide collateral or feedback. They’re good at making sure projects are rolling along without being controlling.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes, they make an extra feature without charging us for it. Typically, that's a great thing, but it’ll cause a bit of a delay on our end. For the most part, I really have no complaints.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Based on the feedback from other teams in the bank that I've worked with Majestic, laying out everything that needs to be accomplished is key. They work best when they know what the goal is. Because they understand how digital marketing works, it’s always helpful to tell them what we actually want to accomplish.