Onilab

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

Their team has incredible programming skills and are such hard workers. Their work has been completed to an outstanding quality. They have done many releases and there have been very minimal bugs since they’ve started working on our project.

Whenever we go live with any new feature, I’m not worried that other aspects of our site not working. Where there have been any problems, Onilab fixes them immediately. It is a big relief that we no longer have to worry so much.

How did Onilab perform from a project management standpoint?

We use the Atlassian suite of products, along with Slack that allows us to chat in real time. If we were the kind of business owners who didn’t want to do any work at night, this could be a challenge, as there was a lot of Slacking happening in the first few months. This was inevitable due to the complexities of our website and how Onilab needed to get to know it.

However, in the last few months, things have settled down and we are able to communicate more through email, which makes it easier to manage during our working hours. Onilab pretty much keeps to their deadlines but this can be pushed out depending on the level of changes that our team gives them.

Overall we’re happy with their project management capabilities, but it might be the only thing that needs a bit of improving, just because they are so far away and we are in a different time zone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They really care about what they do and they seem to know everything. I love that they won’t just do what you tell them to do. They will question why you want to do it if they think that there might be a better or cheaper alternative.

They have already helped us save thousands per month by getting rid of services that we didn’t need, including moving our hosting for our staging website. They are more a part of our team than they are an external supplier.

Are there any areas they could improve? 

It would be amazing if they were in the same time zone as Australia. Having to discuss things at night is a bit tiring, especially if we’ve had a full day at the office. As we grow and don’t want to have to do this, we’ll need to see if we can have one of our team members work at night instead, which isn’t ideal. Nevertheless, it hasn’t been a huge issue for us, and we’re very happy to be working with them.

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

There are so many things we’ve done to optimize the site that it’s increased conversions. We implemented an on-site pop-up when we first started, and the conversion rate was sixfold. Most of the work that Onilab has done either on the frontend or backend have moved the needle significantly in our business. Before we do anything, we test it, so we know it works. Our vendors love our website.

How did Onilab perform from a project management standpoint?

We didn’t use Onilab's project manager in the beginning. We worked directly with the owner. Now we have a project manager, and I’d be able to comment on that further on. We’ve worked with lots of offshore development companies. Regarding communication and availability, Onilab is head and shoulders above anybody that we’ve worked with. I don’t know if that’s because we worked directly with Art [CEO, Onilab] but he’s always online. We use JIRA for all our task management which is clear and easy to streamline.

What did you find most impressive about Onilab?

I would say the communication is really good. I really enjoy the pushback that Onilab gives me because it makes me think. A lot of the firms we’ve worked with will just implement the idea, but Onilab will help us think through decisions with the future in mind and give reasons why it might not work. There’s much more of a team feeling.

Are there any areas Onilab could improve?

Looking back, our development process could’ve been better if we had used a project manager from the beginning. I know Onilab is hiring people, but because they’re small, they don’t have all the resources that a larger company does. That’s also a positive aspect because they do the grunt work and you don’t get all the bells, whistles, and smoke that you may get from a larger company. I wouldn’t have worked with Onilab this long if they weren’t a good company offering high-quality work.