SageDigital.com

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the marketing manager for Assembled Products Corporation, a manufacturing company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sage Digital?

The project that Sage Digital works on is for one of our brand lines called Spray Master Technology. We’ve recently gone through a rebranding and product update project, and as part of that new strategy, we needed a new website to host the new brand and their new products. As a result, we reached out to Brian (Founder & CEO) to make this project happen. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve had conversations with Brian on our ideas for how we wanted the site to function. He’s brought his expertise and influenced the site’s functionality, goals, and operation. We also consult him for things like Google Analytics and SEO, ensuring the site is going to help us in the long run as far as our advertising and SEO efforts are concerned. In the development process, Brian’s team uses GitHub, and then they build content that’s transferred over to Netlify, which lets me edit and do basic coding tasks. 

Even though we sell products and want to educate potential buyers, our goal in this project is to generate conversions. As a result, we want to make the website interactive and captivating. Ultimately, we want people to sign up so that one of our sales representatives can reach out to them — the whole site is designed with this goal in mind. 

Moreover, no matter how far users scroll down on the website, there’s always some type of call to action (CTA) that encourages them to contact us or talk to one of our sales representatives. The functionality of the site is purposefully built that way. Not a lot of buttons are there to click on; users won’t get distracted by anything other than the videos and captivating photos that highlight what our products do. In this project, we’re ultimately trying to funnel people to our sales department as much as possible. 

What is the team composition?

I mainly work with Brian, and he works with a couple of team members. He’s my main point of contact. 

How did you come to work with Sage Digital? 

I interviewed and received quotes from a couple of people, and Brian came as a referral from someone in our leadership team who has previously worked with him. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Sage Digital in September 2020, and we’re in an ongoing partnership with them. However, we’re near the end of the project. 

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

We haven’t technically launched the website yet, so we don’t have any data on analytics, conversions, or views. Anecdotally, my leadership team and I are extremely happy with the website, and Brian also seems to be happy with it. Overall, it’s a pretty successful project. 

On top of that, the quality of their work is great and very professional. Things can get in the weeds or can bottleneck, but Brian is great at responding to emails and getting back to us. 

How did Sage Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

Sage Digital performs very well in terms of project management. We’ve had weekly meetings with actionable to-do lists between our teams. They’re constantly reporting on what’s happening, where things are, and what we need; their communication has been extremely well done and helpful in keeping the project going. In terms of tools, we use Zoom for our meetings, and we use GitHub to review and make changes to the site. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing about working with them is the quality of their work. They’ve taken our brand and translated it into a website in the way that I’ve envisioned in my mind. They’ve exceeded my expectations, and I’m impressed with the way they’ve built something that’s very fabulous. They’ve drilled the project down into something that’s streamlined and effective.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

Our timeline has gone a little longer, but this might have been the first time that Sage Digital has used this setup for programming. It seems that they’ve done a lot of learning. Thankfully, we aren’t on a super hard deadline, and that’s probably why the timeline has gone longer than initially planned. 

That being said, the longer timeline hasn’t really caused any negative effects to the project. Overall, they’ve learned a lot, and I don’t necessarily see the timeline becoming an issue going forward. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’ll recommend Sage Digital highly. I’ve worked with several other agencies over my career, and they’re definitely one of the better ones.

In my experience, not everyone can do this project as well as Brian has done. They make sure that every meeting has a purpose and every action item is delivered. If they can’t deliver, they communicate where the project is and give constant updates and feedback. Their communication has been pretty helpful and makes the project easygoing. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m with Simpson Performance Products, and we manufacture all types of racing safety equipment, such as crash helmets, fireproof suits, shoes, and gloves, and hand-and-neck restraint devices. We also have multiple brands and facilities; we have four facilities in the US and one in Italy. I’m the SVP of marketing, and I’ve been with the company for a couple of years.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sage Digital?

I’ve redone all of our e-commerce sites when I first came on board. Since I’m familiar with Brian (Co-Founder), I’ve employed Sage Digital’s services on a couple of projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We work on multiple projects. Primarily, Sage Digital provides upkeep services for our e-commerce websites. They make changes, updates, and tweaks on the backend of our sites, and they handle hardcoded pieces of work that we need to change. 

In this case, they’re like a call center for me — I call them and describe issues, and then they work on those issues. I have them on a monthly retainer basis, so I procure a specific number of hours from them every month for site maintenance. Then, we do everything else on a project-by-project basis. 

I’ve also given them the project to launch a motorcycle site over in Europe since we don’t currently have an e-commerce site there. They’ve been responsible for getting everything set up.

I initially gave them broad parameters on what I was looking for. We didn’t want to use our existing platform since it didn’t have Europe-oriented capabilities, so we went out and looked at other platforms. Eventually, we agreed to put the site together using Shopify. Sage Digital handled the first 3–4 steps of this project, and then they squared everything away so that our development people could work on it. 

What is the team composition?

For our e-commerce sites’ upkeep, I mainly work with Brian and another engineer who works part-time. Depending on who’s available, either of them takes a look at our site problems or issues. On the European site project, I’ve only worked with Brian. He might have enlisted some additional support, too.

How did you come to work with Sage Digital?

I became familiar with Brian when I first redid our e-commerce sites and when he was working with a different company. Then, he became involved in the development of our initial website, and he was familiar with the platform used to engineer it. When he started his own business, it made sense for me to hire them because he already knew a fair amount of our backend processes. 

For the upkeep work, I knew he had a familiarity with the platform we were using, and he knew the code behind it. It was easy to plug him in. It was the same case for the other engineer working with him. Moreover, since I’ve been working with Brian closely on our main websites, we developed a good rapport. As such, I had no problem taking the European website project to them.

How much have you invested with them?

I pay around $1,500 monthly for the main sites’ upkeep. For the European website project, we’ve spent between $20,000–$25,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the partnership in April 2020 for the upkeep work, and they’ve been doing that for us on a monthly basis. Meanwhile, I didn’t actually pull the trigger on the European website project until December 2020, and we turned that project over in mid-February 2021.

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

In terms of the upkeep work, we’ve had a lot of uptime. I can’t remember any downtime that has happened while they’re doing that work. Their job has been more about keeping internal customers happy. Issues related to data feeds come back to us in our enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, but they've always been able to resolve those issues quickly.

Meanwhile, the European website hasn’t been launched yet, so I don’t have any statistics to compare it to. Nonetheless, I’m happy with the quality of the work they’ve delivered so far even though the site hasn’t been exposed to the masses yet.

How did Sage Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

Sage Digital has always been highly responsive; I get answers back within hours if not sooner on any problems that we can’t get over. In terms of communication tools, we use emails. When issues require us to get together and talk, we’ll pull a conference call. They’ve always been available for calls whenever necessary. Overall, they’ve met my expectations, and I wouldn’t have any problem recommending them to others.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sage Digital’s backend knowledge of our e-commerce platform distinguishes them from other providers. It’s a Ruby on Rails platform, and they know its architecture and structure. On top of that, the quality of their people is good. When I’m looking to build technical relationships, it helps to have a good feel of the people’s quality and skills. Given that, I know that the Sage Digital team is capable, and they’ve always lived up to what they represent to do.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. I’m sure there’s something they can improve, but they’ve met all my expectations. As such, I don’t have anything that I need them to do differently. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Like in any project, use project management software to track information flow while going back and forth with Sage Digital. This will help you know if there’s any problem in terms of meeting anything that you need.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a consultancy in Kansas City primarily focused on brand strategy, go-to-market strategy, branding, and more. We’ve got three former senior executives and two younger partners. We run all of our work for third-party clients through a large contractor pool, so we’re able to expand and contract as the work comes in.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sage Digital?

We are a brand strategy consultancy, and all of my web work is contracted out to Sage Digital.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have three third-party client projects we’re working on with Brian (Founder & CEO). They’ve been providing development work for a nonprofit, helping us with custom coding on Shopify’s backend, among other things.

We’re currently redoing an entire website for a large private equity firm. That entails some custom coding, design, and security things that need to be addressed. 

What is the team composition?

I connect with Brian and a designer from his team. 

How did you come to work with Sage Digital?

We found out about Sage Digital from word-of-mouth experiences from some of their clients. We also had a mutual friend and colleague who I worked with for paid digital advertising out of Arkansas. That person highly recommended Brian for a very specific use case for their custom shop. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $35,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working in September 2020, and we continue to partner with Sage Digital. 

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

The general feedback on the Shopify site has been great, and our third-party customer has been very happy with it. Additionally, our platform’s functionality is high. 

On the other hand, the Sage Digital team is still in the process of completing the private equity site, but we have a high level of confidence that they’re going to do a great job. They’ve been professional, and the technical insights and design aesthetics that they’ve brought forward has inspired us. 

How did Sage Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate through Slack, phone calls, emails. Then, we use Wrike for project management and Figma for designs. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I only work with partners that are “set it and forget it”. I don’t believe in managing projects. We’re all grown-ups and like all of the contractors I work with, Sage Digital is independent and capable, and they’re always on the mark. They always come on time and on budget, and I can’t say it’s different than the other team that I work with, but that’s my expectation. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear plan of what you want and be prepared for things to change. They’re really good at change orders and everything else specific. More importantly, have a clear picture of the timeline you need.