Red Minnow Interactive

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I manage marketing technology at a law firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Red Minnow Interactive?

We needed help with implementing an interactive holiday card to send electronically from our office. We reached out to Red Minnow Interactive to make it happen.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had an idea several years ago about putting together a card where every member of our six offices could share what inspires them. Each team member would take a picture of themselves holding a sign with their inspiration and then upload the photo to a central website. As the site administrator, I would then go in and tag people’s positions, office, priority levels. 

Each office then sent out an email to its contact list that linked to a microsite with a slideshow video customized to each office. Every single time the video was played, it would show a brand-new video. Users could also click through and see the gallery of every team member's photo from every office. 

Red Minnow Interactive built a microsite with a custom CMS from scratch to host the photos and gallery. Since our firm uses older browsers, the site needed to be compatible with HTML5 and Internet Explorer. They created the algorithm that generates a new slideshow video every time a user clicks the email link. They also designed the email that our offices sent out. We only provided the idea— Red Minnow Interactive brought it all to life.

What is the team composition?

Duane (Chief Creative Officer, Red Minnow Interactive) is our primary contact. He has other people on his team, but I don't interact with them.  

How did you come to work with Red Minnow Interactive?

Honestly, I can't remember. We started working together a long time ago.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $5,000–$10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial project ran from August until December 2014. Red Minnow Interactive hosts the website and has helped us create a holiday card every year since.

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

We loved the card—it was exactly what we needed. Red Minnow Interactive worked through our many technical requirements and exceeded our expectations. Internal users can upload their pictures very easily, and the response from the community who received our card was wonderful.

According to our metrics, visitors spent almost four minutes on the site on average, even though the slideshow lasts about 54 seconds. Also, one of the top three exit pages was page 10 of the gallery. So, not only did people watch the video, but they also went through our gallery and looked at almost all the pictures. That’s a really high level of engagement and shows that viewers were genuinely interested in our content. 

How did Red Minnow Interactive perform from a project management standpoint?

Red Minnow Interactive has done a great job. We always have a lot of things coming in at the last minute, and they still manage to turn the project around on time. Duane is constantly available to answer any questions or fix things as needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Red Minnow Interactive always has good ideas to solve any issues we encounter, whether it’s technical or design-related. Duane has excellent knowledge, and it’s allowed him to come up with innovative ideas like the algorithm that gives every user a unique experience.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At one point, we encountered a glitch with uploading the pictures where I had to take over the picture process myself. But other than that, we’re happy with Red Minnow Interactive. Duane is a good communicator, and we follow our timeline.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My organization is a not for profit involved in the construction and financing rehabilitation of affordable housing across the Midwest. We’re a 70-person firm that raises money annually to finance affordable housing projects.

My role is as the chief of asset management, and I oversee a team of individuals responsible for monitoring units over a 15-year regulatory compliance period.

What challenge were you trying to address with Red Minnow Interactive?

We have a team of 14 people going out into the field to inspect around 8,000 units every year using a pad of paper, a pencil, and a camera. Team members would be on the road for 2–3 days at a time, and then it would generally take us a week or more to actually get the full reports drafted and sent out.

It was an extremely inefficient process, and we wanted to develop a software solution that would allow us to do it more easily.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We engaged Red Minnow to help us design an iPad-based solution that would let my team form reports in the field. I had some idea of my key requirements and how I wanted the process to go, but we worked out the majority of the details together. The business workflows were handled on our end, but they created wireframes to help us visualize the product and really brought the project to life.

The app they built extracts information directly from our database to create a listing of all the units an inspector has to visit. Within each unit, the inspector then has the ability to choose from a list of items to flag during the inspection and can attach notes and pictures within the app. When they finish, the information is sent back to the database, which generates a PDF report and emails it back to the inspector within 15–20 seconds.

We’ve done incremental updates over the years as a way of improving a few aspects of the app's functionality, as well as just keeping the technology up to date.

What is the team composition?

There were two primary individuals that we worked with, and there were a few others working with them at their company. One was more of a graphic designer and the other was primarily a programmer.

How did you come to work with Red Minnow Interactive?

We were shopping around for a vendor to work with on this project, and I remember initially getting a bid from a firm here in town that was much larger but also really expensive. I didn’t have a great feeling in terms of their approach and the pricing, so I kept looking.

When I came across Red Minnow Interactive, I sat down with them and just got a really good feeling about the attention they could give our company and the connection around our business principles. Their pricing was fair too, so we decided to go with them.

How much have you invested with them?

In the initial pass, I believe we spent about $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

For the original development project, we worked them from March–October 2013.

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

We’ve inspected around 40,000 units using this platform, and it’s been extremely effective for all of that time. We’ve saved a couple thousand man-hours every year, which paid for the development within a couple months of its completion.

Visually, the app is really beautiful. It has an aesthetic design and the UI/UX is elegant and efficient. The whole project was very well done.

How did Red Minnow Interactive perform from a project management standpoint?

It was great to be able to sit down with the folks that were actually doing the application and aesthetic design. The process was very collaborative, and they were able to deliver a very clear vision with the wireframes before they started coding, which was exceedingly helpful.

It felt like they struck just the right balance with their project management. They used enough administrative layers and discipline to provide structure to the project without adding unnecessary hours to the process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

At the end of the day, they delivered a really elegant solution. It transformed the way we do business at a really reasonable cost. The project was absolutely a home run.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I really don’t have any areas in mind that I think they could have improved.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If I have one regret from the process, it was that they interfaced into our database with a web service that had been created on our side, and I wish we had finished the design of the web service before they started. Our internal team was building the web service while they were designing how to interface with it, so we had two moving targets which made that specific aspect much more difficult.

I would advise anyone else working with them to make sure you have everything set up in advance because if you do face any hiccups in the process it will most likely be because of a situation like this.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our organization manufactures replacement parts for medical equipment, specifically in infusion and patient monitoring. I'm the president and VP of sales.

What challenge were you trying to address with Red Minnow Interactive?

We wanted to increase brand awareness for our business. Our buyers search for us on Google, and we wanted to develop the best platform for our customers. Most of our previous clientele was older, but we've encountered a younger, more mobile-focused wave of customers that we wanted to cater to.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked with us to create an interactive, user-friendly website for our key customers. I outlined what we do, our customers, and our competitive landscape. From there, they developed a mobile-friendly blueprint for our website to showcase new products and existing product lines, with ways to submit tickets and leave comments or testimonials.

They designed and developed everything. I believe the website was built using Weebly, and we plan to add an e-commerce component in the future. For now, all our purchase requests go directly to our team.

What is the team composition?

I work directly with one point of contact.

How did you come to work with Red Minnow Interactive?

My wife worked with our principal contact on another project, and we developed a personal friendship with him. I knew he wouldn't let us down, and Red Minnow seemed like a logical fit. They're the only agency we considered.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost somewhere between $25,000-$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together on this project in February 2015 and wrapped up in June 2015.

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

Our marketing department tracks all the analytics, and we have great feedback from our customers. The site and its communication channels are easy to use, and we've had no issues at all.

How did Red Minnow Interactive perform from a project management standpoint?

They're terrific project managers. They kept us in the loop and sent regular status updates. I never had to chase them, and they met or exceeded all our deadlines. We got everything we wanted in a timely manner.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They listened to what we wanted and were sensitive to our needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We made a few changes, but I can't think of anything that was in their control that could have gone differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Identify your goals and what you hope to accomplish. They're extremely creative, and they will give options that suit your needs.

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I work for First Databank as a UX designer and software engineer. We're a provider of integrated drug and medical device databases and accompanying software that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions.

What challenge were you trying to address with Red Minnow Interactive? 

We initially hired them a few years ago to help with the graphic design of a complex web application that we were developing.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Red Minnow Interactive provided logos, icons, screen layouts, graphics, usability consulting, and image sprites for that first project. Since then, we’ve used their services on 3–4 other projects over the past few years. This includes everything from small graphic asset creation requests to usability recommendations and high-fidelity interactive prototypes. 

What is the team composition? 

Duane (Chief Creative Officer, Red Minnow Interactive) is the person we always work with. 

How did you come to work with Red Minnow Interactive? 

I don’t know the answer as I was not part of that decision. 

How much have you invested with them?

I'm not part of the financial discussions. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Work started in 2012 shortly before I joined that team. The most recent project wrapped last week, but the engagement is ongoing on an as-needed basis.

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

The initial web app that they helped us create is now one of our most profitable products. That's an obviously positive trend. As far as anecdotal feedback, our internal people say their work is clean, sharp, sleek, and makes sense. 

How did Red Minnow Interactive perform from a project management standpoint? 

Red Minnow Interactive is able to take sometimes embarrassingly vague requests and turn them into high-quality artifacts in a short amount of time. That tells me that their internal project management is excellent. We handle the actual product management in-house with them as a third party helper. 

Duane is funny and friendly. He's super easy to work with and very accommodating. Any criticisms or barrages of requested changes are handled with grace and speed.

What did you find most impressive about them? 

Designing complicated web apps is quite iterative. Red Minnow Interactive works well within that structure. They’re able to supply professional, high-quality work that helps to meet our strict timelines. The end products are functional and often delightful. The level of excellent output and superb communication from a remote design agency is what keeps us going back to them for additional projects. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I honestly can't think of anything at this point. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

Don't be afraid to reach out with seemingly small stuff. Red Minnow Interactive is understanding and responsive with even the most nitpicky change requests, without making me feel like I’m a pest.