OptiWeb Marketing

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a practitioner provider of health-related services.

For what projects/services did your company hire OptiWeb Marketing, and what were your goals?

To create a website

How did you select OptiWeb Marketing and what were the deciding factors?

Personal recommendation

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

Create a website: choose an address, choose a theme, choose or recommend art work, edit and comment on content.

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

One

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

Didn't even deliver the selected website. I chose my website from a list provided in June; I confirmed it again two weeks ago as it got ready to go live. I get a message we are going live with a website that I DID NOT chose, in fact it was a dormant site of mine that I specifically instructed him to relinquish.

I tell Brad Sacks, the owner and the person I deal with, that I was going to put an ad in. At the deadline I get an email that the wrong address was live. I had to change the ad to read "website under construction." While he claimed "someone" would fix it I could not trust that the site I chose was actually available.

I specifically asked for marketing expertise. Twice when I asked opinions I was told "It's up to you..." I told him that I wanted an opinion. I asked him about the content and he said "it's fine." It was not in any final form, it was disorganized and I wanted his opinion on what to fix. In no universe was the content at that point "fine."

So many more: There was a page where no matter what I did I could not get paragraph breaks on the view page. When the wrong website went live nothing was changed. No feedback, no acknowledgement. Simply ghosted.

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

Communication was only by email. Emails almost never got a response. But worse, there was almost never any follow up. I was never given a direct number to call or text. I got no feedback of any significant kind - positive, negative or anything of substance.

I requested a phone conversation when i saw that there was almost no follow up. It was either missed, simply blown off, or rescheduled several times. Twice within minutes of the scheduled time. When I finally got a phone conversation. I got a lot of promises and the questions that I collected from past emails were mostly answered. However, moving forward nothing changed.

There was no reply to any email, no follow-up on emails. There was no written plan even in point form, no timeline...It was clear that he did not keep a list of questions or tasks. I had to repeatedly look at old emails to cut and paste questions. Not one phone call was returned without several emails in which I had to go more and more ballistic.

I have only given the larger examples. I have a collection of more minor issues that were entirely blown off. In the end I just said I would not do his job any more by collecting my own sent messages: I told him to let me know if there was an email that he did not understand.

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

I wish I could find a positive. The final product is passable.

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

I got the sense that I did not rate at all. It was a project under 5k - a relatively small amount of money and it was abundantly clear that he had not organized the tasks, questions and issues.

Have regular phone meetings to discuss deliverables and progress on a periodic basis. Respond to emails in a timely manner Follow up on tasks or explain why tasks have not been completed Return phone calls Make a master list of decisions, questions and issues and use it to track progress on resolving these including reasonable turnaround times.

I did not request feedback on professional information but did request feedback on organization and clarity. I got nothing beyond "it's up to you..." or "it's fine."