Marzee Labs

Please describe your company and your position there.

The European Forest Institute is an international organisation established by European States to conduct research and provide policy support on issues related to forests.

I'm the communication officer in charge on the development and maintenance of the website. I am part of the Ministerial Conference on Protection of the European Forest, Forest Europe, team.

For what projects/services did your company hire Marzee Labs?

We wanted to restructure content and give a fresh look&feel. Amongst other, the following needed to be improved:

• Menus
• Navigation with clear pathways according to 4 types of audiences
• Article formats including text, images
• Social media cards
• Mobile responsiveness of tables/charts, and image alignment
• Event module

What were your goals for this project?

We needed to have clear visitor flows that enable users to find the most relevant information according to their profile.

How did you select Marzee Labs?

We initially run an UX/UI analysis with them, and we were happy with their work and decided to continue to the design and implementation of their recommendations

Describe the project in detail.

The content was already there, so the main idea was to work on a theme that could adjust to this and create some content types for the new pages. I was the project lead and liaised with the rest of the web user group at EFI.

We did a few rounds of feedback with the whole team and pandemic aside, we were able to negotiate a final look. The new design was based on a contemporary take on the corporate identity launched in 2018.

What was the team composition?

We had a project manager (Ana), a designer (Pedro), a Drupal backend expert (Luis) and a tech QA (Peter).

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

We are still in the process of gathering web analytics to see the actual change, given that the implementation just finished in December. There was a round of website presentations in all the different offices (Finland, Germany, Spain, Malaysia) prior to the official launch. Everybody at EFI has given very good feedback about the new look&feel.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication was very fluid. We schedule meetings on the spot for specific issues and to handle them faster. We conducted several feedback sessions and a training session towards the final stag eof implementation. After the initial implementation, we used GitHub to keep track of bugs and enhancements.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I think the fact they don't need a physical space to run and everything is under control and on time is impressive. This probably reflects on their overall flexibility and willingness to do a good job.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I had Friday update meetings with the project manager, however despite of GitHub, during the rest of the week it was difficult to track what everybody was doing. Although this may be just my personal management style, I felt a little lost.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a biomedical research laboratory focussing on understanding the role of protein aggregation in human diseases such as Alzheimers’ or other dementias. Our lab brings together about twenty researchers from bioinformatics, biophysics and cell biology backgrounds. We also produce scientific software as part of our efforts. I am a senior scientist at the Switch laboratory.

For what projects/services did your company hire Marzee Labs, and what were your goals?

We asked Marzee to solve several problems for us: we wanted to move two existing websites to a new host, rebuild our laboratory’s existing website that was based on an outdated architecture, and set up a new website for a recently created bioinformatics tool.

Our goals were making bioinformatics tools publicly available, increasing visibility of our work and preventing that our laboratory website become obsolete. In the case of the laboratory website, we also wanted an updated and more appealing look for the website.

How did you select Marzee Labs and what were the deciding factors?

We worked with Marzee labs in the past and we were satisfied with the results, but there was a personal connection, as well, since one of the founders used to be a member of the Switch lab.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

My supervisor explained our goals to Marzee and then he handed most of the details over to our lab manager, one of my colleagues and myself (depending which the part of the project it was). Marzee used Netlify to set up the basic structure of the websites and involved us in putting content in.

They transferred some of the content directly and they gave us access to the content manager of the website in preparation to change the content we wanted to update and we also could make modifications to the website structure (like adding new pages). It was important to us that we could add or modify content later on after the website became live without their help.

They developed a new logos for the lab and our bioinformatics tools, and made a new colour scheme for the laboratory website. They had great training material explaining what and how we can do and they were very patient if we had questions. They addressed our requests for changes until they achieved a look for the website we were happy with.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We were in contact with the head of business. She gave us regular updates on what they have done and relayed our requests to the developers. For some details we were directly communicating with one of the developers.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We have new websites up and running that are stable, look good, and deliver the functionality we require.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Very smooth. We had a Google Meet teleconference with the head of business and a web designer from the Marzee side and our lab manager and myself from our side at the beginning of the project. We have two other video calls with the business developers thereafter, but we mostly communicated via email with the head of business. The information was always transferred to the developers because we saw the results in the website. Despite Covid19, things went at a good rate.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I have never worked with any other company before therefore I cannot compare them with other web developer companies. What impressed me mostly how patient they were with us, because we didn’t know much about developing websites, and sometimes we had to get internal alignment before we could tell them what exactly we would like them to do. Their head of business is a fantastic communicator.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

A better internet connection for teleconferences!

Please describe your company and your position there.

Founder at menos hub menos hub is a non-profit with the mission of simplifying micro-business creation to allow anyone to create their own opoortunities.

For what projects/services did your company hire Marzee Labs?

Build a plataform to showcase smallbusiness that had an adapted product/service during covid times

What were your goals for this project?

A functional platform that could allow people to research small businesses by type and products at the same time that would allow small businesses to enroll and register as members

How did you select this vendor?

Willing to collaborate and speed

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Web plataform development

What was the team composition?

Programmers, designers and an account manager

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

After 3 months we have almost 500 businesses registered on the platform, with good usability and no technical problems.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The communication was good and clear and the timmings were always set beforehand and agreed upon

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The complete response provided - web development, UX, design and an account manager to follow the proccess

Are there any areas for improvement?

The result was really great and I highly recommend. The team is small and naturally the timings of the development set in the beginning is not always exactly how you wanted but we always discussed it and reached a middle ground

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the design lead for a health innovation company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Marzee Labs?

We needed to create our website. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided frontend development services using a Static Site Generator stack. We had the design and all of the specifications ready for them. They only had to develop the interface of the website. They also helped with some backend features as well.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 4-5 people from their team.

How much have you invested with them?    

We’ve invested $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in December 2019, and we wrapped up in April 2020.

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

 They delivered on time and their designs were pixel perfect. We’re very happy with them.

How did Marzee Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

It was easy for our team to work with them. They created a Slack channel just for us and we also communicated via email. They’re always available for anything we need.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They delivered everything correctly, which means we don’t have to review their work too. It was exactly like the design we gave them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’re very happy with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It should be easy to work with them if you have your specifications ready.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We connect brands and consumers through influencer marketing, music, videos, streaming tv, and feature films. We integrate brands into those entertainment properties. I'm the senior marketing manager.

What challenge were you trying to address with Marzee Labs?

We recently launched a proprietary AI product that helps us find the best entertainment vehicles for our clients. We needed to redesign and restyle our website to reflect the tech theme that now runs through our brand. We were unhappy with our previous agency, and we wanted to work with a new contractor.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with a creative agency to set all the layouts and designs. Once those designs were finalized and approved by our executives, Marzee Labs digitized everything and created the website. We liked the flexibility and the functionality available in WordPress, so they built our sites in it.

What is the team composition?

There was one lead contact and two frontend developers.

How did you come to work with Marzee Labs?

They worked for us as a frontend developer on a previous project. They came to us through a recommendation from our head of technology. We did do an RFP for this project, but a lot of the agencies we work with come to us through referrals.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent around $50,000 for two site development projects, a site optimization project, and maintenance contracts.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2018, and the largest release was in January 2019. We still collaborate with them.

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

They completed a major project within two months. That can often be a nightmare, but they really rose to the task. They created custom modules on the backend that we can repurpose for many different pages and scenarios, which are very helpful.

How did Marzee Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

We gave them challenging deadlines within the December holidays, but they hit all the milestones. We were in constant, daily contact, and they did very well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their competency is very good, and all of their designs and code are tight, clean, and easy to understand. Even though we were separated by several time zones, they contacted us every day. They were straightforward and easy to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had to work out some bugs with a form they built, and their QA could be a little better. I'm still very happy with their service.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear and concise about your objectives and your desired deliverables. If you're communicative, you will get a good result.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of the digital team at ARTE, a French-German publicly-funded TV company. My team is in charge of making sure that our company’s video content is available on both desktop and mobile devices.

What challenge were you trying to address with Marzee Labs?

We needed an expert to help us with our Drupal systems.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Over several years, they’ve worked on our four main websites that were built using PHP and Drupal. More recently, they’ve been using React and WordPress. We explained our functional needs for each of the websites, initially meeting them in-person to answer all their questions. They got to know us pretty well after some time, so we didn’t need to meet in person anymore. We described the required functionality of our end-result during those meetings, and they filled all the gaps with their technical staff.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Peter (Founder and Lead Drupal Architect, Marzee Labs), João (Frontend Developer, Marzee Labs), another frontend developer, and a web designer. There were 7–8 people involved in total. We’ve also been in touch with a success manager, who was mainly in charge of making sure we had everything we needed, the budget, and other items. We were in contact almost daily using Slack and if required, we’d also have weekly calls to make sure everything was alright, and there weren’t any misunderstandings.

How did you come to work with Marzee Labs?

We have a strict selection process, by which we publish requests for proposals and then make a selection. As we’re publicly funded, pricing is very important and takes up 40% of the final score. The remaining 60% of our consideration is about the technical support. Marzee Labs was both the cheapest and the best on the technical aspect.

How much have you invested with them?

It’s reached several hundreds of thousands of euros.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Marzee Labs 6–7 years ago. Our latest project ran between January 2017–July 2019.

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

We’ve been able to participate in some open-source projects with them, which has given us a good overview on how the space works as well as a presence in those communities. On the project side, one of our websites has a lot of live streaming concerts, and we’ve had some really big success thanks to their work. We’ve been able to successfully livestream some pretty big concerts.

How did Marzee Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They were more on the agile side in this respect, and they taught us some nice things about scrum. They’re quite cutting-edge.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to always find new talents and recruit some good developers impressed me.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I couldn’t say anything for now.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I recommend having a chat with Peter, then clients will be convinced pretty quickly.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Created in 1967 we are a renowed University in Portugal with four campuses in Lisbon, Porto, Braga and Viseu. Providing training to about 18,400 students. I am a Senior System Analyts at Lisbon Headquarters.

For what projects/services did your company hire Marzee Labs?

Marzee Labs was hired to create a website for a specific new project based in Drupal technology. At the project start-up, specifications were not yet fully closed. Marzee Labs came up with the option of splitting the project into two phases, to speed up the delivery of the project.

What were your goals for this project?

Marzee Labs designed and developed a website to meet two goals:

1. Act as the public website for the project
2. Act as a collaborative work platform within a restricted user community

How did you select this vendor?

They were recommended to us by another agency. There were three vendors, all of them selected because of proven experience in deploying Drupal CMS. Marzee Labs excel in several items, such as:

• Involvement in proposal production
• Proposal submission time
• Total cost estimative

From the first moment until the project delivery, we always felt confident in the vision and deliverability from Marzee Labs

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Designing, developing and customizing a Drupal CMS platform to provide not only front desk website features but also a collaborative environment where users can produce and share information.

What was the team composition?

It is clear that Marzee Labs has a very flexible structure regarding the resources allocated to each project. From the beginning, we had a project manager constantly engaged with the project. Apart from the PM the project team was composed of 2 Drupal developers and one designer.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

This project enabled the possibility to provide a website where information could be gathered in a controlled sharing environment.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project was conducted from a SCRUM perspective, with the implementation of several sprints. A key aspect was enabling end-users to do compliance monitoring and follow-up for each sprint. The tools used for project communication were Skype and GitHub.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

With scarce guidelines, Marzee Labs delivered a robust and well-planned system. Meeting the requirement to use Drupal, Marzee Labs not only authored all the design components but also streamlined the production infrastructure to meet the continual development that the project required.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The conduction of this project had few areas for improvement. The production of documentation may be a factor to improve.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Porto i/o is the leading coworking space in Porto, Portugal, since 2014. I am the founder and currently the project lead.

For what projects/services did your company hire Marzee Labs?

Marzee Labs provided us with a new platform to power our sites (the main one and spin-off projects). Part of Marzee Labs team is also using one of our coworking spaces, and they continuously provide ad-hoc consulting on technical topics.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals were to migrate all our websites, refreshing their look and feel, as well as making them mobile-friendly.

How did you select this vendor?

We were very much impressed by Besugo, Marzee Lab's state-of-the-art piece of technology that uses a static site generator approach for institutional sites. It suited our needs, budget and vision for what we want to achieve. Moreover, they are part of the open-source community and it matches our values.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

In a nutshell, here are the phases of the project:

1. Current site analysis and re-structure proposal.
2. Product revamp and evolution.
3. Design (low and hi-fi mockups) including style tiles.
4. Study and iteration on mobile-first approach.
5. Implementation and content migration.
6. Project management, tests, documentation and training.

What was the team composition?

Marzee Labs team was composed by:

• 1 PM
• 1 Product specialist
• 1 Lead developer
• 1 Designer

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The thin tech layer and simplified editorial platform that powers our websites were a drastic improvement so any one of our team can now contribute to our several websites. Right now we are finishing the content production and the release is going to be a massive step forward for our business since we'll be able to communicate well and beautifully our values and what we have to offer.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project was divided by sprints and several demos were being done as the project went forward. The communication was really clear and transparent. What we enjoyed the most was probably the fact that we always felt secure and in control of what was happening from a timeframe and budget perspective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their culture. Not only their structure is flat, but it is clear that everyone in the team (and even in the project) feels equally important. There was never any typical "us against them" situation, and we could feel like we were part of their team, even though we were the client.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Since Marzee Labs is small at the core, and their work in a very non-traditional way, they have challenges with resources stacking. Again - they were very transparent about this at the beginning and we clearly knew that there will be some parts of the project where their team will be less available, as they would be in a more critical phase of another project. This, for us, was never an issue, because our critical phases of the projects were always well treated.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Community and Coliving for Digital Nomads. I am the CEO.

For what projects/services did your company hire Marzee Labs?

Develop a niche web site

What were your goals for this project?

Build digital presence

How did you select this vendor?

Found them on our travels

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They provided:

• Web development
• Social media
• Advertising
• Copywriting
• Strategy

What was the team composition?

Tech, Account Management, Copywriter

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

They created an incredible, niche site that produces traffic and compliments the brand.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Excellent

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Dedication

Please describe your company and your position there.

Parli is a media platform building an encyclopaedia of opinion. I am the Founder / CEO.

For what projects/services did your company hire Marzee Labs?

Front-end design UX consulting Architecture

What were your goals for this project?

Optimise site design for multiple forms of user behaviour, while keeping close eye on SEO and on the underlying architecture.

How did you select this vendor?

Marzee Labs came highly recommended from two highly respected contacts for their initiative, commitment, design smarts and speed.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Marzee Labs has worked on all aspects of our site: architecture, front end development, design, UI and UX consulting.

What was the team composition?

The team consists of 5 people - all with expertise in a particular sector but a generalist's comfort across the whole project. The team was project managed brilliantly too.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Increased PVs, increased time on site, reduced bounce rate. All within 3 months.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Marzee Labs uses a dedicated project manager who was exceptional.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their initiative. Far from purely delivering the work we asked for, they kept coming back with new ideas and suggestions for optimising our design and approach, almost all of which we took on board and implemented.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No!