milk*

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a nonprofit, public policy think tank in Washington DC. We worked with milk* on website design and print collateral. I was the director of digital media, so I oversaw all our digital properties, including our website, social media, and email campaigns.

What challenge were you trying to address with milk*?

We originally worked with them on a website redesign. We were on a Drupal site and we wanted to update the backend and then the frontend design. Our site was probably five or six years old at that point and in desperate need of a refresh.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with milk* over the course of about 10 or 11 months to redesign the site and migrate it to WordPress. The reason for migration was primarily for functionality, but also just larger design.

We publish a number of reports, white papers, and issue briefs in print format. In our second year of working with milk*, they took over those services and helped us to design those. We were probably producing three or four print collateral every one to two weeks. They also helped us with add-on service, primarily on the design side, around email templates and event collateral.

They also helped us with updates to our brand and style guide, so that the brand we were sharing and using internally was consistent. Together with milk*, we also updated documents in line with those style recommendations. Overall, we’ve worked on over 150 projects with them.

How did you come to work with milk*?

We put out an RFP for the website redesign. We were primarily looking at firms in Washington, D.C., but we got a recommendation from one of our consultants, who had worked with milk* previously. He had a good experience with them, so we included them in RFP process. As we went through the review process, we were particularly impressed with their experience and design work.

How much have you invested with milk*?

We’ve invested close to $1 million over the course of three years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January of 2014, and the relationship is ongoing. I have since left DC and that organization, but milk* is still working with them.

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

I kept a close eye on our website traffic and user flow, both before and after the redesign. A few metrics that improved post-redesign are average time on page, average number of clicks into the site, and total user time on the site. We redesigned a few landing pages specifically to highlight on the homepage and showcase, and they got higher click-through rates and engagement rates. Qualitatively, we received feedback from stakeholders, both internal and external, that the site had improved dramatically. We were much more in a modern space when it came to site design.

Most of our print collateral went up to Capitol Hill and was geared toward staff there. The feedback from them was that documents were much more engaging, approachable, and digestible because of the way the collateral was designed and presented. From a broad perspective, we saw deeper engagement. We positioned ourselves as more modern and forward-thinking, both in the site design and the collateral.

How did milk* perform from a project management standpoint?

They were always responsive, which is probably their strongest suit. The biggest thing for me, given the sheer volume of projects, was that there were a lot of crunch moments. They had multiple projects on their plate, working on a number of things at once. The other challenge initially was that they’re based in Connecticut and we’re in Washington, DC. However, they were always flexible with calls and in-person meetings. We had at least a quarterly meeting, where a few of their folks would come to our DC office, and sometimes more frequently. They were always accommodating with digital communications, phone calls, or just coming down to help us think through a project. I would say responsive, flexible, and creative are their biggest attributes.

What did you find most impressive about milk*?

It’s the comprehensive nature of their services. They have a team that’s probably on the average-to-small size for creative companies, but they had people in-house who could do everything, from coding and design of a robust WordPress site, to print collateral, branding, and event collateral. They had people who could get in the weeds and do a lot of the nitty-gritty, day-to-day work, but they also had people who were great creative minds and would think from a 30,000-foot level.

Are there any areas milk* could improve?

I can’t point to anything specifically. They had some turnover in their junior staff when I was engaged with them, but they were always communicating with us about any changes or impact to our account. I never felt any ill effects from that.