Sayenko Design

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve done four jobs with Sayenko, but the most recent was an aggregated job portal. Our organization has various different companies, each with their own job board, so Sayenko pulled all the job postings together to display on our website. They had to figure out how to scrape all the sites in a streamlined manner and present the results in a way we liked.

Typically, when we work with Sayenko, we give them our requirements, they develop a proposal, and then we agree on the work. From there, we have an iterative process that allows our stakeholders to view and make comments on the work. Sayenko has worked on lots of different projects, including SEO.

What is the team composition?

The team varies a bit each time, but the latest project had two people.

How did you come to work with Sayenko Design?

We interviewed 4–5 web dev firms we found online. Sayenko stood out to us because they were close to our time zone, had a good reputation, and charged a fair price.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend about $15,000 a project.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our latest project lasted from November 2017–February 2018.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team was very up to speed on what the look and feel should be. Initially, they walked us through a lengthy questionnaire to indicate what we wanted. Examples of other sites they’d built fit our customers’ expectations, and matched our competitors’ offerings. During a couple of meetings, we went through a series of design and build steps and reviews. We asked them to migrate as much of the information that we had as possible and also improve the design. They also helped give us new social media and strategic marketing abilities.

The team integrated the ability to post blogs, put on webinars, and generate leads for new clients through the website. We don't run a lot of business through the site, but as a consulting firm, we like to show value to the market. Posting articles on engaging topics helped generate interest in our knowledge base with our potential customers. After they finished the basic platform, it took us quite a while to load our own data. They supported us with the final launch, and currently have a maintenance contract to keep the site up and running.

What is the team composition?

We mostly interfaced with Mike Sayenko, the owner of the company.

How did you come to work with Sayenko Design?

We had certain parameters to choose our vendor. Initially, we did a web search for companies on the east side of Seattle. We wanted a proficient WordPress developer who would give us control of the site for future updates. Some of their clients had been employers of our current staff members, so we ran references. We didn't run an exhaustive trade study trying to find a provider, because we’d grown about 50% last year and didn't have much time. Once we were comfortable with Mike and the references checked out, we decided to go forward.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $15,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement started in October 2016, and wrapped up in February 2017. Most of their work was done within the first couple of months. It took us almost six months to get the data loaded.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We contracted Sayenko Design to build the WordPress website from scratch and to do some design work such as updating the logo, letterheads, business cards, and flyers. I initially filled out a questionnaire regarding what our needs were as well as our existing resources. Then, we had an on-premises meeting where Mike, the owner and chief designer, went through a presentation—half of it was a sales pitch and the other half was regarding the technology they would use and how the site would look.

The contract was broken up into three stages including the website, marketing, and design components. During the first stage, they created a skeleton of the website and showed me the general structure of how it would look. The same applied to logos and other design work. They required additional input from me in terms of filling in the content to be used on the website. The second stage was the actual development work and the third stage was for final touches.

In terms of the logo design and other marketing materials, the primary language is Russian and I contacted Mike specifically because he speaks a little bit of Russian, so there would be no language barrier. They did some copywriting work on the English version of the site where they came up with slogans, but I decided not to use any of them as it is a challenge to do this correctly with Russian being the native language. All the slogans ended up sounding too cheesy and a little too templated, so we decided to do this ourselves instead. The work was essentially more about the functionality of being able to translate, as opposed translating the content specifically.

The project wasn’t an end-to-end development—we asked them to create a structured template and the front pages, totaling five pages in total. It was up to us to fill in all the content, including blogs, contact information, our PayPal page, and translating certain pages into English and Italian, which we’re still working on.

The site is up and running, however, the official launch will be next year after we test everything out.

What is the team dynamic?

I worked with three people: Mike, who took care of the design work; Kyle [Web Developer, Sayenko Design], who took care of the technical aspect; and another team member who started to work on search engine optimization and copy but we decided to stop those efforts.

How did you come to work with Sayenko Design?

I was searching for a local firm in the Seattle area because I wanted to be able to personally contact them. As it is a site for a Russian company, I needed someone who had a basic comprehension of Russian so that they could read the existing site and see its structure. After I started looking for firms with those two criteria, I came across Sayenko Design.

How much have you invested in them?

We invested approximately $12,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2017 and the work was completed in late July or August of the same year. If I ever need their help in the future, it will be more on a consultation basis.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us with full website design, stationery design, logo, copywriting framework, etc. They also helped a lot with SEO [search engine optimization]. They built the website from scratch using WordPress. When they made the wireframes, they used Envision to present it to us. We wanted a site that was simple and streamlined — we don’t have any special features or functionality at this point.

They provided us with an SEO best practices document that included strategies we could try. They also gave us an Excel spreadsheet of all the keywords, cost per click, etc. They offered to do more copywriting, but we decided to pursue that ourselves.

What is the team dynamic?

I worked with Mike [Owner and Chief Designer, Sayenko Designs] and Matt [Web Strategist] the most. There were 1–2 other people who were working in the background.

How did you come to work with Sayenko Designs?

We did an online search and someone I had previously worked with had worked with them. I liked the website they did for their company, so we reached out to Sayenko. I looked at 2 other local agencies and Sayenko’s price was better, so we went with them.

We have incorporated the keywords, but it’s so recent that we don’t have any results yet.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $15,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in the fourth quarter of 2016 and they had everything ready to go in 2–3 months. There were a couple of times we caused delays by not getting content to them in time. The site was launched at the beginning of August 2017.