SitePen

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Cognition Digital

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We build digital marketing and advertising technology

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SitePen to accomplish?

• Accelerate development of geography targeting tools
• Convert styling of system into a dark theme
• Provide design direction on specific components

SOLUTION

How did you find SitePen?

Online Search

Why did you select SitePen over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

What was the size of SitePen’s team?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

SitePen was tasked across a few different scopes to deliver: 

1. a Mapping component that we could plug into our application to allow for geographical audience selection. 
2. a new style template and implementation across our platform to switch to a new design theme. 
3. UI/UX design documentation to guide the future development in our site.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Deployed code to our production environment

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

We had direct access to a project manager and to technical personnel throughout the porjects. They tracked project scope and progress through Asana online. It was super easy to meet and move quickly through our projects due to Site Pen's organization of the project. All of our work was delivered on time, on budget and very professionally. We had every issue addressed to our satisfaction.

What was your primary form of communication with SitePen?

Virtual Meeting

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

We really enjoyed the fact that highly technical personnel were made available immediately and were able to respond quickly to questions and concerns we had from the moment we met them. I mean, in the very first sales call before we were actively working together, they allowed me to ask questions of their development team and the people I met with became a part of the solutions team assigned to our account. 

The ability to work closely with the development resources made it possible for us to move rapidly and complete our projects without undue hiccups.

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

NA

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder/CEO of Strongest AI

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We deliver personalized workouts and exercise programs through a best-in-class iPhone + Apple Watch experience.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SitePen to accomplish?

Build a web app that for managing + publishing complex datasets

SOLUTION

How did you find SitePen?

Referral

Why did you select SitePen over others?

High ratings, Pricing fit our budget, Great culture fit, Good value for cost, Referred to me, Company values aligned

What was the size of SitePen’s team?

2-5 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with SitePen?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We tasked SitePen to build an app that manages complex workflows for managing and publishing datasets for workouts and exercise programs. These datasets power the content of our iPhone + Apple Watch app.

The datasets are complex and nuanced. The key deliverable was a working web app (and test suite) that members of our team can use to create, manage, and publish datasets that power our app.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were able to reduce the time to create, manage, and publish datasets by roughly 5x. We extensively tested the deliverable through manual QA to ensure that it met our internal quality standards.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

SitePen was highly adept at project management. We primarily collaborated through a combination of Asana + Slack to manage milestones and deliverables throughout the project. We completed the originally anticipated scope of work a couple of weeks early, and we made significant progress toward our stretch goals by the end of the scope of work.

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

SitePen brings absolutely top notch engineering talent. UI/UX design with just enough project management overhead to strike the perfect balance.

• The combination of Slack updates
• detailed and useful Pull Requests through GitHub
• Asana updates really kept everyone on the same page. There was no drama along the way.
• Just positive attitudes, clear communication, and solid, on-time deliverables.

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

Honestly, there's not a lot I can nit-pick. We actually received quite a bit more value than I anticipated by the time the project concluded. I definitely intend to work with SitePen again on future projects.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SitePen?

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

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SitePen?

We needed someone to supplement our custom software development projects.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

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

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

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

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.