O2 Web

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the president of a digital media e-commerce company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Digital media e-commerce

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire O2 Web to accomplish?

• built a web commerce platform using Adobe commerce

SOLUTION

How did you find O2 Web?

Referral

Why did you select O2 Web over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Referred to me

How many teammates from O2 Web were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Build a high quality e-commerce platfrom which ties into our own CMS and can handle millions of products.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

O2 Web delivered the product four months late and lacking in many features they agreed to include.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

At first, O2 was great to work with.  Their discovery phase was expensive compared to others and was supposed to be completed in a month.  It eneded up draggin on for 3 months simply due to theur poor scheduling and conflicts with other clients.  They were apologetic, but did nothing to get back on track.

What was your primary form of communication with O2 Web?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Nothing.  They have a couple skilled people, but the rest all all talk.

Are there any areas for improvement or something O2 Web could have done differently?

First off O2, came to use as a reccomondation from Adobe Inc.  We interviewed a number of companies and watend to go with a Canadian company with a Canadian based team since our company is also Canadaian. Prior to contacting e-commerce develoment companies, we did a massive amount of prepr work with included a full detailed breakdown of everyhting we wanted to accomplish, all features we requered, and even provided full Figma desings for our site. 
 
We decied to go with O2 as they comfirmed they could build what we wanted for the budget we had to spend.  We then commenced the discovery phase which they outplined would take 4 weeks to complete.
This is where things started to fall off the rails for O2.  The discovery process eneded up taking alsmost 3 months simoply due to O2 not being able adhere to their schedule.  They had many excuses and appologies, but in reality they we simply too busy for us.
At the end of the discovery process, we had not made any changes to our original scope of work, but thier proposed budget was THREE times more than what they quoted us.  It was a standard bait and switch scam.

We called them out and through a few weeks of negotiation, they decied to honor their original quote for the work.  At this point, they switched the entire team we had been working with to a new team of only a couple people.  The rest of the development team seems to have been outsoruced overseas (India).
Through the deveopment process, they kept dropping features that we had in our original brief and compeltley changed the design which we had established in Figma.  They basically just did a slight modofication of the defaul Magento theme. O2 eventially delivered a final product 4-5 months after their original delivery date.

Company Responses

The vendor responded on October 30, 2024.

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback. We are disappointed to learn that your experience did not meet your expectations, and we’d like to clarify a few points.

Throughout the project, we organized weekly meetings and maintained regular communication, creating what we felt was a positive environment with no reported dissatisfaction. Your comments on the discovery phase are valuable to us, and we appreciate the adjustments you allowed to better meet your needs. We worked together to agree on a suitable budget for your growing business and committed our efforts to deliver a quality product that was well received, based on our discussions.

Our team made considerable efforts to deliver a quality product and ensure a successful launch, which, based on our interactions, appeared to be well received on your end.

Additionally, we would like to emphasize that we have never outsourced our development abroad. Our team is proudly based in Canada, and we are committed to maintaining a high standard of service.

We remain open to further discussions to clarify any concerns you may have and to offer our support for security updates on your Magento platform. We are still awaiting your response to our follow-up on this matter.

We hope to have the opportunity to discuss this in more detail.

Best regards,