NAVI Agency

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive vice-president of a small manufacturing company. We manufacture flags, banners, and other promotional products.

What challenge were you trying to address with NAVI Design?

We were looking for a comprehensive and user-friendly website to include all of our varied products. We had a previous website, but the information we needed to display didn’t fit well. It was built a long time ago, and the program it was built on didn’t work well. When we looked at other options, and we weren’t able to find an out-of-the-box offering that would function as we wanted. We also wanted to allow customers to create mockups of custom products on the site.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I think the site was built on Joomla. We started working with Anna, and she’s been with us the entire time. We’ve also had a couple different people within the company, and all of them were helpful and useful, especially Svetlana. She was very good. She understood the issues we were facing and could really flesh them out.

We have three separate sections to the website. One of them is for stock products, like a US flag. Everyone needs a US flag. They go on the website and order that. There aren’t a lot of options involved in that order; you choose the size, the material, add it to your cart, kind of like Amazon.

Then we have custom, such as business owners who needs their company’s logo on a flag to hang outside their store. Such a customer can go on the site, upload a logo, and then choose the design, size, style, and colors for the flag. They create a digital mockup of what the end product is going to look like. It sounds easy, but it’s actually very complicated. There are 40 different styles, and hundreds of combinations of accessories, additions, subtractions, colors, and all that stuff.

The third section we’re doing is sort of a hybrid. We would give the customers templates which they can customize a little here and there. Maybe they choose the colors of their ‘Open’ sign so it fits with their personal branding. It’s a little cheaper and easier than starting from scratch. NAVI developed the website to make all of these options available to customers.

How did you come to work with NAVI Design?

The owners of our company went to Ukraine and met with five different companies. They thought NAVI was the most professional. The owners were impressed with their pitch, and they really seemed to understand the problems going forward. The price was also quite good.

How much have you invested with NAVI Design?

We’ve invested about $8,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in November of 2016, and our relationship is ongoing. We expect to finish next month, so we have about four weeks left in the timeline.

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

They’ve been able to take a lot of varied information they’re not familiar with, and organize it in a way that will be as user-friendly as humanly possible. They came up with a lot of really good ideas for how to organize that and make it user-friendly. We really appreciated that, as we weren’t sure how to do that. They came up with a lot of good solutions for the problems we had.

How did NAVI Design perform from a project management standpoint?

I think that, in the beginning, there was some miscommunication. We couldn’t seem to get on the same page with the person assigned to our project. There were a lot of missteps at the beginning of the project. After that person was switched out, the communication was much smoother. We were able to get on the same page. When we bring up an issue, they understand it and are able to resolve it. At first, we were having difficulty with that, but that only lasted about two weeks. The new person was much better at understanding us. We usually have two emails a week, and then one phone call every one, to two weeks, as needed.

What did you find most impressive about NAVI Design?

NAVI Design, and especially Anna, is extremely committed to ensuring the project is exactly what we want. Anna’s putting in a lot of time and effort to make sure the end product is exactly how we projected it to be. I know she works a lot of overtime and works after hours because of the time zone difference. She’s always available, and we talk to her at crazy hours of her day. I feel that she’s very dedicated to the project.

Are there any areas NAVI Design could improve?

We have had to ask for updates at times. We would appreciate having an update schedule. For example, every Monday they send us an update to let us know what’s going on. We wouldn’t need to keep bothering them when they’re in the middle of something, and we would know when things are coming up.

They have holidays in Ukraine that we don’t have here. They kind of disappeared for a week and a half, and we got a little worried. It turned out that the office was closed. Letting customers know ahead of time that you’re going to be out of the office for a week keeps them from stressing and thinking you’ve run away.

Do you have any advice or recommendations for potential clients?

I recommend that people have a clear idea of what they’re looking for before going in. If we had been clear internally about what we wanted, we could have gotten off the ground faster. I think we confused them a lot in the beginning, and then they confused us because we weren’t organized internally.