Raygun

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Program Director at San Diego Design Week, an event presented by Mingei International Museum. San Diego Design Week is an annual five-day series of events that celebrates the region's interdisciplinary and binational design community through talks, studio tours, workshops, and self-guided tours.

For what projects/services did your company hire Raygun?

San Diego Design Week brought Raygun onboard for the design and implementation of a website for the inaugural event in September 2020. This involved strategy to determine the best platform to showcase the events to an international audience of designers and the general public.

What were your goals for this project?

A main objective was to design a website that would be highly accessible to international visitors, including a fully bilingual experience in English-Spanish, to build an audience in the inaugural year of the event.

The website became a pivotal component of the event when the programming had to shift in response to COVID, as the website became the main point for attendees to experience the programs.

It was essential that the website be able to showcase various types of content for 110+ community organizations (including articles, photography, video, and more), with opportunities for attendees to navigate the content by filtering the events by discipline, location, etc. 

How did you select Raygun?

Raygun has a working relationship with Mingei International Museum, having completed the museum's website. Raygun's team provides valuable input as a strategic partner - drawing on its impressive knowledge of accessibility and functionality and its involvement within the larger community of design, arts, and nonprofit organizations.

Describe the project in detail.

The team worked in partnership with Raygun as the strategy and approach to the event was established in the earliest phases. Raygun advised on opportunities for the website's features and functionality and then presented the website design to the team, with an opportunity for client feedback, which was then incorporated into the final design.

Raygun provided advice and feedback as the program was developed to continue to ensure the website's features would best support the content and showcase the program. Raygun guided the team through the content entry and managed the launch of the website in September 2020.

What was the team composition?

San Diego Design Week worked with Raygun's two principals as the point of contact for meetings, presentations, and other coordination. Raygun assigned a project designer to assist throughout the project.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The website's launch during the inaugural event September 9-13, 2020 received thousands of visitors and helped drive a newly formed audience to San Diego Design Week's online events - many of which reached capacity.

We continue to hear positive responses from attendees who visit the site, and the site's functionality has been excellent. Raygun has always been quick to respond to questions from our team. 

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We received constant communication from Raygun through email, Basecamp, and Slack, and through phone calls and Zoom when necessary.

The principals were very professional in their presentation of the materials for review with very effective communication during meetings and exchanges. 

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Raygun's insightful input on strategy and knowledge of accessibility and functionality were truly impressive. Its involvement and wide range of experience with nonprofits and art and design organizations in the community proved essential in pivoting in response to COVID to effectively use technology to virtually organize and create community connections. 

Are there any areas for improvement?

There were times when the project could have moved more quickly but we were operating at a time of great uncertainty during COVID, which Raygun navigated extremely well. Ultimately the team's feedback was incorporated into the project, and the final product was truly impressive. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of communications for a pension fund firm. Our sole mission is to provide retirement benefits for young women employees throughout the US.

What challenge were you trying to address with  Raygun?

When I was hired in February, everything, including the website, the branding, and the logo, was very outdated. The main role that I had this year was to relaunch the website and give the organization a brand new look and feel. I was looking to hire an agency that had the technical and design expertise to do that. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope of Raygun’s work involves coming up with a new brand identity, web architecture, and web design as well as frontend development and Craft CMS setup. Because another developer is working on the self-service end of our website, we also need Raygun to provide them with templates. That way, both of the sites will look similar to each other. 

Raygun will also implement a login system into that self-service portal, but for now, it’s not exactly a fully interactive UX yet. Throughout the project, we work very closely together, so they provide some tech support as well.

What is the team composition?

I work with three people from Raygun regularly: their designer Ami (Graphic Designer) and the two principals, Stacey (Co-Founder & Design Director) and Dalton (Co-Founder & Technology Director).

Dalton has done all the coding and the implementation, and Stacey is somewhere in the middle. She’s very design-minded, so she’s been involved mostly in the beginning when we were figuring out the website structure.

How did you come to work with  Raygun?    

The first thing I did when I was hired was to investigate which kinds of one-stop-shop companies could execute our project. We needed a team that could do it within the timing and budget that we were looking for. I talked to about 16 companies before gradually narrowing it down.

In the end, it came down to Raygun and one other large company. For a company like us that had never done anything like this project before, I liked that Raygun was small and very personable.

When I first spoke with Stacey about our targets, she asked me really great questions. She asked what we wanted to get out of this project, not just in a technical sense. She wanted to know what the broader goals of the organization were. I felt that she really understood why we set out to do the project — not just what we wanted to do and how.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of the project up to now is $65,000. They weren’t the cheapest, but they weren’t the most expensive.

What is the status of this engagement?

We signed an agreement on March 24, 2020, and the partnership is ongoing. We’re not live yet, and we’re entering into an agreement for maintenance and support next year, which we’re finalizing. We’re also exploring live data entry implementation for some of the forms that we have on the site, so we will continue to work with Raygun.
 

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

I don’t have metrics yet, but one of the things we did before this project was to survey fund participants and administrators on their understanding of what we do. We want to survey again after a certain period of time to see if we’ve helped alleviate any pain points that we had.

As for right now, Raygun was able to get all of the branding work passed. My staff and the board of trustees had unanimous enthusiasm, which was not something that I expected. Raygun hit upon a design that helps define our organization and what it wants to be. Everyone fell in love with it right away, which made my job a lot easier.

One of the keystones of the website and branding is an art deco design that they came up with. Everyone loved it so much that it’s on the front door of our new office. The branding that they came up with has carried all the way through to the new interior design — that’s how much of a success it was.

How did Raygun perform from a project management standpoint?

Raygun’s a small group, but everyone is really excellent at what they do. One of the things that drew me to them was that I knew that I wouldn’t be talking to someone who wasn’t in the project from the beginning. Stacy and I have been having the conversation since March that we’re always up to speed, and they’re excellent at what they do.

We’ve been using Basecamp, and it works really well. I’ve worked with a lot of different project tracking software, and I’m usually not a fan of them. I’ve found Basecamp to be user-friendly, and if there’s something really urgent, we’ll just go over an email or ping each other.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve been very responsive to the fact that we’re not a typical organization and that we have to run everything past the board to get approvals. We built into the agreement that there would be some flexibility and a lot of time for reviews. They’ve been very understanding.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The site has had some holdups because we’re working with another developer. Also, any holdups that we’ve had were the result of the multitude of misunderstandings on our side with how quickly we were going to move. It’s nothing that I would put on Raygun, and generally, I’ve found them to be really responsive.

Our review process has to work internally, and anytime I felt as if we were not going in the right direction, they were able to take my feedback and pull the project back. They’ve done a lot of their independent research.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

See their size as a strength. I think there can be a tendency to think that if you have a large team at every conference, it means that you’re going to have a smoother experience.

I would say that that’s not the case at all. It can be great to be on a first-name basis with every single person who’s involved with every aspect of your project. I also mentioned to Stacy that aside from the work that they’ve done with nonprofits in the past, we were also attracted to the idea that smaller can be better.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for an international museum. We’re located in San Diego, California. I’m the creative director and technology strategist. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Raygun?

Initially, we wanted to put our collections online. But, the more we worked with Raygun, we realized we needed to rethink our whole digital platform and how we were communicating with the public.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The end product was a new website. But, they provided much more than just web design and development. They were a strategic partner, helping us make decisions that would serve our organization long-term.

First, they got to know us as an institution. (But, they came into the first meeting already knowing a lot about us, which showed they cared.) After that,  they helped us think beyond simply getting our collections online. 

They took part in planning and strategy along with us. They learned our main goal was to increase our accessibility, and they helped us think about other ways to achieve that. They challenged how we made our decisions, and that approach helped us think differently. 

They helped us access how our needs for the website would be different during museum renovations. We also thought about how to create a site that could scale with us as our institution changed. We also did empathy interviews with our audience. Then, we went into design and development.

What is the team composition?

I worked with two people, Stacey (Co-Founder & Design Director, Raygun) and Dalton (Co-Founder & Technology Director, Raygun). 

How did you come to work with Raygun?

We saw an example of their work with a new children’s museum in San Diego. It was joyful, frictionless, and stunning. We met with them and found they were easy to work with. It was so easy, and they’ve been phenomenal to work with ever since.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably invested close to $50,000 over the past 5 years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2015, and the partnership is ongoing.

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

Everything they’ve helped us with has been done really well. When we closed for renovations, we lost about 80% of our web traffic. We launched the new website six or seven months afterward, and we re-gained that traffic quickly and consistently.

We’ve had much more engagement througout our site, versus just on our calendar or exhibitions page. Now, people are exploring new sections. Raygun suggested that we add a section with long-form content. That has been really successful.

How did Raygun perform from a project management standpoint?

I communicated with Stacey daily, if not weekly. The team is really organized and Stacey keeps everything moving. They’re really good at communication and following up. I don’t think I’ve ever had to ping them twice. If we notice a bug, they’re really quick to respond. 

It feels like a partnership. They really cared about the user experience and how we could be authentic to our mission. Even if we make a decision that they may not have recommended, they’ll go above and beyond to support it and ensure we’re set up for success.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They can build and design anything. They built very custom features for us. For example, we use a tool called Airtable to organize aspects of our museum. They set up a CMS that connects with Airtable so that everything feeds directly into our website, and we don’t have to update it in two places. 

Also, if something is important to us, it’s important to them, whether they agree or not. If it’s important to us, they make it a priority.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m excited to see them grow and scale, and we’re hoping we can grow with them right now. Due to their size, we’re not able to execute on everything we’d like to. But, we also don’t have the budget to execute on everything anyway, so it works out. It will be exciting to see them grow.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Potential customers should listen to their advice. I rely on them so much. They’re quite a dynamic team, and they do good work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of content strategy and new media for the Carnegie Foundation, a policy and research organization that works in the field of new media.

What challenge were you trying to address with Raygun?

We were in the middle of redesigning our site and needed someone with expertise to help us move our site to the WordPress platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, they got our site redesigned on-time and on-budget, meeting all the specs that we wanted. Since then, we have retained them for regular maintenance, occasional development work, and site-hosting. They provide us with the capability of a pseudo-in-house team, in the sense that they know us and provide great development and maintenance work for our site.

What is the team composition?

We primarily worked with the two principals, Dalton (Co-Founder and Technology Director, Raygun) and Stacey (Co-Founder and Design Director, Raygun).

Initially, Stacey led us on the research and design, with her identifying user and content needs and working on design specifications. Dalton then came in and helped us with the build.

How did you come to work with Raygun?

We wanted a smaller outfit that we could work with closely. I did some Google searches for outfits that specialized in WordPress and were operating in our space. Even though they’re in San Diego and we're in the Bay Area, they came up to meet us face-to-face and sold us on themselves.

We wanted a partner in development—we had ideas in-house and were very particular on how we wanted them. They were very thoughtful in listening to our needs and providing us guidance on how they could use technology to solve our problems.

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested somewhere between $50,000–$100,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in the summer of 2014, and the site launched in the fall of 2014. They’ve been our ongoing partners on maintenance and development work since the site launched.

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

There are two ways to share the impact that the site has had so far:

First, I can share how they manage and administer the site. This is what I cared about the most going in. They were able to come in and create an array of custom content to integrate into the site in a matrixed way, which made the site maintenance and the upkeep easy to do.

The site has withstood the test of time for 5–6 years, which is a testament to the build that they ran and the maintenance work that they continue to perform. It’s still highly functional, and the craftsmanship of the site has allowed it to work for our needs for years now.

Second, I can share information from an audience standpoint. I’ve alluded to how the content, the people, the programs, and the products are interlinked. The content strategy developed by Raygun has helped our audience find what they’re looking for and navigate our site. 

Depending on your point of entry, you can easily jump between the different facets of our site. This could be finding a program, then painlessly jumping to who worked on it, what else they published, and then end up reading the new content their working on.

How did Raygun perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re fantastic at project management. Whenever they provide an estimate for work, they always meet their deliverable dates.

They’re also flexible, easily able to work around our own time crunches and accommodate us during emergencies. We’ve developed a lot of trust with Raygun over the years.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have deep expertise in the field of web design and development, but they also listen to our needs. The respect in their approach is evident. They’re not trying to impose their expertise on us, but rather they use their expertise to propose solutions to help us meet our specific challenges.

There's not a one-size-fits-all way to solve a problem. They understand that in a way that very few do, tailoring all solutions to us because they work for us, not just because they worked for their last client.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’re great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take advantage of the thought partnership you have with them. If the first solution they come up with isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, keep pushing. Their egos don’t get in the way—they’re more than happy to keep digging deeper to find the solution that makes everyone happy.