SitePen

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a department head for an HR company. We offer a platform that handles payroll benefits and serves 200,000 small businesses.

What challenge were you trying to address with SitePen?

We wanted to create a blog that could be operated independently by our marketing team without asking for help from our web developers. The site needed to be a subdomain of our main webpage.

What was the scope of their involvement?

SitePen was in charge of creating the UX/UI design for our blog. They developed the microsite according to our existing framework and design guidelines. Our teams worked collaboratively and delivered a blog we could operate through WordPress.

What is the team composition?

We worked with the CEO for the most part, especially at the beginning when we were discussing the project. We also worked with an account manager, a lead developer, and a designer. They also had a larger backend team helping them during the process.

How did you come to work with SitePen?

They were referred internally by one of our frontend web developers.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together for six months, from March–September 2022.

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

We needed this web property, and the fact that it’s now up and functioning is our measure of success. Although we have traffic numbers, we’re starting from a baseline of zero because we didn’t have this blog previously. Therefore, we haven’t established quantitative metrics yet.

How did SitePen perform from a project management standpoint?

We had great communication with SitePen. We used Slack for daily communication and Zoom for our weekly meetings. They also had a SitePen portal, where I could see the project lead and get weekly updates; this worked as our tracking board alongside Asana.

Other relevant information and designs were shared through Figma and Google Docs. We had two different ways of working with them; some tasks were project-based, with a clear set of deliverables, and others were time-based.

What did you find most impressive about them?

SitePen was a fantastic partner. We had a lot of requirements and constraints for this project since they worked in an existing wireframe, and they did a great job adapting to this situation. Getting a site up and running always has issues, and they were a great partner in helping us address those issues and resolve them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything they needed to improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

SitePen is a good firm if you need to move fast. I would recommend starting with a clear understanding of the technical and design requirements of your project. This way, you can make good use of your time and budget.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technical lead at a company in the travel and entertainment industry. We provide different apps to help people plan their trips when using RVs, campers, and other things of that nature.

What challenge were you trying to address with SitePen?

We required SitePen’s assistance to add features to a mobile app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

SitePen has helped us add new features to one of our cross-platform mobile apps using React Native. However, since we don’t have many internal resources assigned to this app’s maintenance and support, we keep going back to SitePen to help us with updates, software architecture consulting, and project management.

Our app provides users with helpful information for planning their trips, as well as other features that might be interesting for them. As for this specific project, we had SitePen create a new authentication feature for the app.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with SitePen’s CEO, a project manager, and one of the lead developers.

How did you come to work with SitePen?

We were referred to them, and we’ve been working with them for a long time since then — they originally developed this app for us from scratch.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $500,000–$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2020, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

The app that SitePen has helped us develop and update has close to five stars in the App Store — it is a highly-rated app, and users love it. Additionally, it has no bugs.

How did SitePen perform from a project management standpoint?

SitePen is great at project management, and their updates are very honest; we’ve never had unpleasant surprises. Moreover, they’re very professional and reliable, and they always deliver projects on time and on target. I’m in charge of managing vendors for my company, and SitePen is, by far, the best partner in that regard; I can't speak highly enough about their project management.

Their team provides us with updates on their progress at least once per week, which is great. Whenever I’m not sure about how something is going, I can reach out to them, and they answer very quickly. We usually communicate via Slack and Zoom, and we use Asana for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

SitePen delivers high-quality work, and their reliability is impressive. Additionally, they have high-level developers on their team, so whenever I bring them a hard problem to solve, they find a great way to solve it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a very clear vision of what you want, and they’ll help you make it happen.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager for Intuit, a Fortune 500 software company. We develop and manage TurboTax, Quickbooks, Credit Karma, and MailChimp, and I specifically manage the Quickbooks team.

What challenge were you trying to address with SitePen?

We needed someone to supplement our custom software development projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired a couple of SitePen engineers to assist in the development of some technical products and short-term projects. They’re helping us build an attribute for an asset library and a core set of components to support some of the architectural decisions and testing.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work with three software engineers and one project manager.

How did you come to work with SitePen?

SitePen was already working with our company on another project prior to my joining the team. We renewed their contract and wrote up a new statement of work for this project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

This ongoing project started in February 2022.

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

The project is still in process, but we can estimate that it’s going to cut down on development time for future projects. Moreover, we’ve had a fantastic time working with their extremely talented engineers as they take a lot of initiative in providing highly-efficient solutions.

How did SitePen perform from a project management standpoint?

They work extremely well from a project management perspective. They’re really good at getting their needs met and consistently communicating with me.

We use JIRA to manage the project and typically communicate through Slack and Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re very impressed with the skill level of their team members. They’re just the type of people I would hire full-time without hesitation.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are timezone differences so availability can be an issue, but it doesn’t really impact the partnership because they’re consistently communicative.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise you to make sure that their skill sets will be fully utilized for the work you’re going to give them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work at a global technology platform company and lead a big data platform team.

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

We hired Sitepen to come in and build a front-end application for our big data platform to essentially have users of our platform onboard and use it in a self-serve manner. The front-end needed to be built end to end of a wireframe design. We had very tight timelines and we needed the entire front-end application to be built in 2 months and wired to mock APIs in the backend.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

This came in as a referral from one of the engineers that I work with. I got awesome feedback. This was the deciding factor

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

Project included

1. Building all the static pages for the self-serve flow from the wireframe
2. Adding validations at every step of the flow to make sure proper inputs are coming to the backend
3. Test the flow
4. Make sure the code coverage is above 85%
5. Build smaller size features and merge PRs early and often
6. Wire to the backend Mock API
7. Add additional enhancements to the flow that came in from the design

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

2 engineers. Both are senior front-end engineers.

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

We had a very short timeframe to build the front-end. Engineers were super quick in absorbing what needs to be done. They started the development on day

There was great collaboration with the XD team to make sure anything not clear on the design is discussed and finalized for development to continue. The developers worked in speed, which was amazing. The developers were thorough and built high-quality code.

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

We had daily standups. We use Jira to track the work. Project management was pretty good. I found no gaps or issues.

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

• Totally professional.
• Awesome engineers. Very thorough, deliver high quality code, creative, fast
• Delivered what was promised ahead of time.

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

None to share based on how this project was handled.

Please describe your company and your position there.

The Food Revolution Network is a small organization dedicated to healthy, ethical, sustainable food for all. We develop courses and content to help individuals eat healthy foods to feel their best. I work on the tech team as the backend developer

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

FRN currently uses a forum solution that is no longer maintained and is no longer sufficient for our desired feature set. We hired SitePen to determine the best replacement technology in the first phase of work, but did not move forward for the implementation phase.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We initially were considering using PubNub as our backend technology for this forum, and found SitePen's name on a list of PubNub's certified partners. We appreciated their communication initially and the initial proposed scope of work.

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

The initial phase focused on mostly research. We gave SitePen our project charter and access to our platform, and they researched technologies to determine which would be most appropriate given our current and proposed target feature set. SitePen delievered documents with their understanding of our feature set, technical proposals/recommendations, and initial design walkthroughs and mockups.

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

Two - me, the backend developer, and my immediate supervisor, the Head of Technology.

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

We have a great foundation to push the project forward, with clear recommendations (and the reasons behind them) and some initial mockups.

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

We appreciated SitePen's communication and thoroughness in working to fully understand our proposed feature set.

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

Communication and thoroughness.

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

Overall things went smoothly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of a software development firm. We provide solutions for public safety, such as 911 communication centers, police departments, fire departments, and so on. We have customers across the US and Mexico.

What challenge were you trying to address with SitePen?

We started developing a web version of our apps, but we didn’t have the in-house expertise to accomplish it in a reasonable time frame. We reached out to SitePen to help us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

SitePen helped us with the frontend development of our web app. They used Dojo Toolkit while we handled the backend. First, we gave them some background on our progress — our internal team had already been working on the project for some time, but we had some technical issues on the frontend. The team then helped us with that, especially in terms of the UI/UX.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager and 1–2 developers, depending on what we were working on. 

How did you come to work with SitePen?

SitePen was actually one of the developers of Dojo Toolkit. We contacted them to ask for recommendations on using the tool, and they offered to do it themselves. They put together a proposal, and we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $300,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The project went from May 2015–June 2017.

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

SitePen’s work saved our web app and let us fulfill our vision. The browser version of our app increased the marketability of our products. We mostly do business through the RFP process, allowing us to comply with our clients’ requirements. Thanks to them, we were able to continue to compete in the marketplace.

How did SitePen perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management was outstanding. It was very structured and orderly — the project went through various phases, which all had statements of work. There was a set of goals and deliverables for each of them, so the process was transparent throughout. In terms of communication, it was excellent. We had weekly meetings to talk about the project status. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their expertise was beyond comparison. Overall, working with SitePen was a great experience. They helped us get to where we wanted to go, and it turned out really well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind in terms of what they could’ve done better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be crystal clear about your expectations and goals for the project. Explain the problem you’re looking to solve and have a clear path for solving it.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Product Director for Intuit QuickBooks where I lead our Ecosystem Discovery team.

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

We hired SitePen to help us execute on improvement our recommendation system. The goal was to create new access points and improve existing access points and patterns so that we could improve the customer experience of receiving product recommendations.

How did you select SitePen and what were the deciding factors?

We had other teams who had worked with SitePen in the past and they came highly recommedned.

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

The two SitePen engineers have been embedded in our agile scrum team process and helping us pick up stories every sprint. Not only have they been able to execute on the project, but they've added capacity to our team on other tracks of work which has helped improve our velocity overall.

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

2 Engineers and 1 Project Manager.

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

We've been able to add 24 new access points and we've seen them drive 2X improvements in adoption of some of our core features.

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

The team is great at communicating regularly, asking for help when they need to be unblocked, etc. They're extremely talented and fast and we're doing a lot of smaller pieces of work and they haven't lost track of anything!

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

The team works very quickly and efficiently without a lot of handholding.

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

I think the team is awesome and it would be great if their Project Manager could help do a little bit more of the regular project tracking.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a 50% principal owner of an insurance marketing firm. We help insurance agents and agencies nationwide grow their business through highly variable and customized direct mail marketing.

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

Our first website was built 15 years ago by a friend when we launched our business. We re-designed our original website with another company about 7 years ago. While the design was improved, we were still not satisfied that it portrayed the professionalism we were looking for. We hired Sitepen to design and develop a website that would convey our strategies and give us an exceptionally clean, modern and impressive site.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Our director of operations is friends with an employee of Sitepen and urged me and our other principal owner to contact them. After seeing their work and speaking with other companies that have used their services, it was quite clear this was the team we wanted and needed.

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

Once we hired Sitepen, we had a kick-off meeting with their senior UX designer in addition to a project manager and their senior management to discuss our goals and objectives. A short time after our initial meeting, their team delivered wireframes and mock-ups for our new site. We were blown away with what they presented to us and we knew immediately that we would finally have the site we desperately needed. After a few minor changes, their team designed and developed a clean and modern website for our company. They even graciously re-designed all our marketing letters and postcards!

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

We had an assigned project manager who was our main contact from start to finish in addition to their senior UX designer.

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

After launching our site, we saw a 44% increase in traffic, and our incoming requests for our products and services increased 30% literally within 90 days! The increase in our revenue far outweighed the cost of their services. I have even mentioned to them that I thought they undercharged for their services. Our clients love the custom and updated site and have a real clear understanding of our products and services. Thank you Sitepen!

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

We had weekly discussions with their project manager in addition to having communication access with their senior UX designer. They were very responsive throughout the entire process from start to launch. Sorry for all the late-night emails and text messages!

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

Our new website! They have some of the worlds most brilliant talent that were able to understand what our products and services are all about and be able to convey that in our new site. It is as if they have worked in our organization since day one. They understood our business model perfectly.

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

Nothing comes to mind.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Mojimix Corporation. We focus on cultural-specific emojis and stickers that users can purchase through an application.

What challenge were you trying to address with SitePen?

We wanted to provide easy access for customers to buy our stickers by building an app for iOS and Android.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We discussed with SitePen the features that we wanted for the app, and they came up with solutions and a plan of action. They then designed and developed an app for iOS and Android using the latest technologies.

What is the team composition?

We worked with their VP. Their programmers and project managers took turns presenting their side of the story and contributing something to the project.

How did you come to work with SitePen?

I’ve known SitePen for a long time because I’ve worked on additional projects with them. I liked that they were organized, creative, and talented. I contacted them to discuss this project, and they came back with a four-month plan of what could be achieved weekly and monthly. That’s why we went with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked from January–April 2021.

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

We received positive feedback from people using the app. Also, SitePen’s development knowledge was very good. They don’t have any metrics to measure success, but they achieved everything they promised.

How did SitePen perform from a project management standpoint?

SitePen had their management program where we sent documents and reported on any issues. We had weekly meetings that were easy to follow through. Throughout the process, they were on time and great at meeting goals.

What did you find most impressive about them?

SitePen gave us updates and was accountable. They came up with weekly plans and stuck to them perfectly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything they could improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

SitePen will get the job done correctly. If you want to save money without going to different people, you should work with them and use their ability to bring ideas to life.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an early-stage startup composed of three people. We’re a software firm creating a platform that allows companies to collaborate more efficiently while building their own software products. 

What challenge were you trying to address with SitePen?

We needed some help accelerating some design and development work. After building our application, we needed to develop a modern, marketing-driven website with a nice design. We also needed some design improvements for the application itself. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The engagement was a mixture of design for both our application and marketing site for the business. SitePen did a visual refresh for our application, suggesting changes to colors, fonts, layouts, positioning, and behavior of certain UI elements.

We also had a stream of questions that they answered inside a shared Sigma document, showing us the design decisions they made. This gave us a foundational framework for further designs beyond the project. 

SitePen also did the development of the website, and they used technologies that I approved and reviewed with them. We used Dojo, which is a modern typescript framework. It creates what’s known as a statically optimized site, so it’s efficient and easy to maintain. It was the technology that we were mutually familiar with, so it was a good fit for this collaboration. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with Alyssa (Technical Project Manager) as well as a number of engineers. We also worked with their management team. 

How did you come to work with SitePen?

I’ve known them for a long time, and since I’ve worked with them in the past, it was a logical choice to hire them. I knew they were great at creating designs that were reasonable to implement, and their outputs weren’t the same as what everyone else’s applications or websites looked like.

I could trust them to finish the task without having to check in every day to tell them if they were doing something wrong. I knew they’d quickly understand what I needed, so I hired them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $50,000 on this project. It was a relatively small investment, but it was enough to get the work done. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from July–August 2020. That was when the bulk of the engagement happened, and we’ve done some small things afterward.

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

In general, people love the designs that they see, and we get a lot of positive feedback about the website and the design of the application. We know that SitePen played a big part in that. 

How did SitePen perform from a project management standpoint?

SitePen was pretty flexible in adapting to our needs and being available as needed. Our typical choices for communication tools were our product and Slack. Then, we used our source code repository to track all changes. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

SitePen gave us what we expected and did it very efficiently and with quality. They took our ideas and came back with something better than we’d imagined. They didn’t only do exactly what we requested but also gently suggested better things for the project. 

If we disagreed with them, they understood and accepted that and did what we asked. However, their opinions were appreciated most of the time. They didn’t just blindly give us what we wanted, especially if they knew it wasn’t the best idea. They were pretty adaptable, and they bent where they needed to bend, so the engagement was pretty smooth and harmonious.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. Nothing comes to mind. In general, every project is different and challenging, but this one was relatively easy. As a result, I didn’t really see anything that might give me any concern or alarm. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Knowing what you want to be done will help you accomplish the project faster than if you only have random ideas that you haven’t thought through. SitePen can meet your needs in either of those situations. If you don’t know what you want, they can provide business analysis services. However, if you pretty much know what you need, they can skip the analysis and start working with what you have.

You must know where you’re at and where they can realistically meet your needs. If you think you know everything, then you won’t get the results you want because you won’t take the time to truly figure out what you need from SitePen.