Social Driver

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of communications at National Farmers Union, the second-largest general farm organization in the country. We represent farmers and ranchers in education, programming, and advocacy.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Social Driver?

We needed help to redesign and launch our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Social Driver has redesigned and developed our website from scratch. The team has brought us through the whole design process and helped us launch the site. Social Driver also provides website maintenance services.

We’ve used Asana for project tracking and communication. Social Driver has used WordPress for the website development.

What is the team composition?

We’ve communicated with around five teammates from Social Driver, including Luis (Project Manager), Cat (Web Strategist), a creative designer, an account manager, and a few developers.

How did you come to work with Social Driver?

I knew Social Driver’s leadership and organization. I also got a referral from one of their other clients, with whom Social Driver had recently worked on a website redesign. Thus, I was able to get some information and include them in the mix of companies we reached out to.

I sent an RFP to 5–6 agencies, including Social Driver. We reviewed the proposals and decided to have a discovery meeting with a few of them to discuss who they were and the needs of our organization. We had two discovery meetings with other agencies and ultimately chose Social Driver for the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $90,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Social Driver in January 2025. The website redesign was completed in September 2025, and the team has continued to provide maintenance services.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve seen an increase in website traffic. When I reviewed the numbers, we were averaging 200–300 visitors per day. We’ve also received positive feedback on the UI and users' ability to find information about us, from our members, and from organizations we work with in different states. Social Driver has delivered a site with great usability, and we haven’t had any issues.

How did Social Driver perform from a project management standpoint?

Social Driver has delivered on budget and on time. Although the project went for a little longer than we initially anticipated, that had nothing to do with Social Driver or us; it was just the project developing as we built it out. We extended the deadline until the end of the summer, and everything was still on track, and the site got launched with no issues. We’ve used Asana for project tracking and communication, which I really enjoy. It's nice to have information in one space that I can go back and find instead of digging through emails. We’ve also used emails and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate Social Driver’s creativity and collaboration. The team has worked with agriculture and food clients before, and they understand the problems we’re trying to solve. Social Driver has provided great solutions for our needs.

We don’t have a big budget, and Social Driver has taken what we have to deliver a great UX, look and feel, and brand experience. The team pushes us outside the box, which is what we asked for. Social Driver is quick with responses, and I love the interactive meetings we have to review different things.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes, I feel lost in the process or timeline. However, this is one of many projects we’re working on, so it’s also on me. Website projects get technical, and there are things I don’t completely understand.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Let Social Driver do their work. Give them your parameters and let them bring creative ideas. The best part about hiring an agency is having a large group of creative people. Let them push you on different ideas or thoughts. You can always refine them, but provide the information you can and see what they come up with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the Senior Director of Digital Strategy at Farm Credit Council.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Social Driver?

We hired Social Driver to redesign our primary and secondary websites. Our primary goal was migrating from Drupal to WordPress. We didn't have the required experts on our staff from a development perspective, so we wanted easy content management and a lot more flexibility. Our existing website was probably five years old, and we needed a fresh design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Social Driver was responsible for redesigning and developing our primary and secondary websites. The team migrated the sites from Drupal to WordPress. As part of our website project, we also did a brand refresh. The team was helpful in ensuring that it was aligned with our brand and mission, while also updated and modern. Additionally, Social Driver created an owner's manual for our staff to easily refer back to after launch.

What is the team composition?

We worked directly with a dedicated account manager. The VP of Account Management was heavily involved in our project and was part of every step of the process. We also worked with Social Driver's lead developer, lead designer, and lead partner. We felt like everyone on their team had a vested interest in our project and was aware of key updates.

How did you come to work with Social Driver?

We looked at Clutch reviews and asked for local referrals. We had a specific need for a web vendor with NetForum experience, and Social Driver came highly recommended. When we held our initial interviews, Social Driver stood out with their detailed proposal and interest in our project. I was impressed with the overall level of detail and recommendations they provided. Their RFP was miles above the others.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $175,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Out build project was from January–September 2024. We now host our website and are on a routine maintenance contract.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Social Driver successfully met the project's objectives. Although we are still assessing the full impact of the website launch from a month and a half ago, we are already seeing positive results with a significant increase in traffic—five times more users than before. We also connected users with local associations more effectively than ever, thanks to the streamlined design of the new website.

A key goal for the site was to improve the CMS and simplify content management for our staff. One of Social Driver’s most valuable contributions was creating a comprehensive owner's manual, which gave our team the tools and autonomy to make major updates and add new pages independently. This capability has been essential for our ongoing needs.

How did Social Driver perform from a project management standpoint?

I was impressed with Social Driver's communication. We held regular project meetings via Zoom. We used Asana as our main platform for task management, which streamlined communication. At any moment, I could see who was working on specific tasks and any outstanding items on our end, providing complete project transparency. If I needed to follow up via email or hop on a quick call, the team was always proactive and responsive.

Social Driver delivered everything on time and within budget. Any delays in the project were due to our team needing additional time for reviews or scheduling conflicts on our end.

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

I want to give a shout-out to Joseph, our account manager. He was on top of things and always kept us updated — we never felt like we were in the dark about the project. He was very proactive in everything he did and had a solid understanding of our goals and priorities and how his team could help accomplish them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was very impressed with Social Driver — they were very responsive throughout the entire project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were instances where we didn’t provide all the information Social Driver needed upfront. If we had shared more details at the start, it would have helped them gain a better understanding of our company. While Social Driver made great use of the information we did provide, offering more context earlier on could have streamlined the process.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I highly recommend working with Social Driver. They are true professionals and have been phenomenal to work with. The initial phase involved thorough research and onboarding, where they guided us through several design concepts for our website. I appreciated that the team invested time in identifying the best strategy for us. From the founder to every account manager and designer, the entire team showed genuine interest in our project’s success.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director, Digital Straetgist of ICI

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The Investment Company Institute (ICI) is the leading association representing regulated investment funds. ICI’s mission is to strengthen the foundation of the asset management industry for the ultimate benefit of the long-term individual investor. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Social Driver to accomplish?

• Educate and advocate for investment funds

SOLUTION

How did you find Social Driver?

Other

Why did you select Social Driver over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fits our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Social Driver were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

We worked with Social Driver develop a brand for an advocacy campaign that educates investors in the benefits of regulated investment funds, and empowers them to advocate on their behalf. As part of the brand, we developed several creative assets, including videos and graphics.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

ICI recruited over 180,000 people for the advocacy campaign, delivering nearly 20,000 letters and calls to Capitol Hill.

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

Items were consistently delivered on time and through clear communication. Social Driver was always eager to support anyway possible. From weekly calls to quick respones over email or text, they were always reachable! 

What was your primary form of communication with Social Driver?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Social Driver is a true partner. It's not a client-vendor relationship. It is a joint team effort to achieve their goals. It is a complete blending of both teams to reach incredible outcomes. From their deliverables to their overall project management, Social Driver is absolutely excellent.

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

No

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the principal of Pyxis Partners, a public affairs firm focused on health equity, affordability, and accessibility.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Social Driver?

We needed help with a customer project focused on developing and disseminating federal policies related to mental and behavioral health improvement.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Social Driver helped us design, layout, and develop a website that featured content we created and digital assets that went along with the customer’s project.

In terms of the process, the team guided our customers and us through preferences for different designs. They showed concepts and examples of other sites they had designed so we could get a sense of what we wanted to do, and based on those iterations, they started building the site.

Regarding features, the site allowed users to store and search through a lot of content easily and quickly, which was one of the project’s key components. Social Driver helped us design keyword searches with tags and filters for this.

What was the team composition? 

I mainly interacted with two members of the Social Driver’s team, who were project and client leads, but more people were working behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Social Driver?

We already had an existing relationship with Social Driver through mutual professional networks, and we chose them because they had the skills to complement our firm’s capabilities in terms of website and digital tools design and creation, which we didn’t have.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from April–October 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Social Driver’s work quality exceeded our expectations. Our customer was pleased with the design and aesthetic of the website. Moreover, the final product was what they were looking for in terms of functionality.

How did Social Driver perform from a project management standpoint?

Social Driver’s team delivered on time and budget and was great to work with from a communications perspective. The overall team effort was great.

Regarding tools, we used email, Google Drive, and Asana.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Social Driver’s team was very skilled in building websites with complex functionalities, and they also understood how to engage with organizations focused on policy and advocacy like us to create digital tools that could help amplify our work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Social Driver’s team was great at communication, but due to the project’s nature, we inevitably encountered differences in how we communicated and wanted to manage the project. Nonetheless, the team was always very open to addressing those problems, resulting in a pleasant experience.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Getting acclimated to the Social Driver’s project management processes and tools would be the key to success for these types of projects.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the former chief of communications officer at a national membership organization. We represent leaders from nonprofits, foundations, and corporate-giving programs working to advance the common good.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Social Driver?

We hired Social Driver to redesign our website. Our biggest challenges were to upgrade the site and bring sub-brands under one umbrella. We also wanted to refresh our branding, so they updated our logo, too. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Social Driver worked on our logo and website redesign efforts. We had a sub-brand that was more modern and newer, so we wanted our primary brand to match that. Our team gave them some inspiration, but they worked on putting together an entirely new brand. For context, our logo hadn’t been updated for over 15 years, so it desperately needed to look more modern. 

Moreover, the team created our branding guidelines. They put together a full write-up for anybody who would do graphic design work for us in the future. This would be helpful for us when we work with consultants and other contractors. 

For technologies, we used WordPress — the same platform that the older website had. However, the backend was organized a bit differently. This had much to do with organizing content differently and ensuring the main website pages looked and felt new. 

What is the team composition?

Social Driver had a team of about 4–5 members, and we engaged with 2–3 of them regularly. There were more teammates behind the scenes, but we didn’t interact with them on a regular basis. 

How did you come to work with Social Driver?

One of our staff members led the project and reached out to different teams in our area. Meanwhile, I knew Social Driver because I knew one of their co-founders from early on in my career. However, that wasn’t the biggest reason we chose them. They simply had the best proposal. They’d also done a number of similar websites in the nonprofit sector, which was truly appealing to us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $100,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement lasted from June 2021–January 2022. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We brought all traffic from two separate sites to a singular website, which helped us increase our overall traffic. The refresh of our brand and logo brought alignment to all of our graphics, and we saw the difference in that across our social media platforms.

How did Social Driver perform from a project management standpoint?

Social Driver was great at meeting deadlines, and their workflow was great. For tools, we primarily collaborated using Asana, which worked well for our teams. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Social Driver had a deep knowledge of the nonprofit sector. When we partnered with them, we didn’t have to explain much about how the sector or our organization worked. They had varied clients, so they could bring lessons from others into our engagement. This was truly helpful when we were solving problems or doing things creatively. They often had a great example of how they’d done things in the past. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there weren’t any. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have as many internal conversations as necessary to ensure you’re on the same page about strategy before hiring an external consultant. Think through your own strategy as an organization, and be clear about what you want to accomplish. This will make your relationship with Social Driver a lot smoother. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Senior Director of Production of a media company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

My company is a news website that delivers smart, efficient news worthy of your time, attention, and trust.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Social Driver to accomplish?

• Design and develop webpages

SOLUTION

How did you find Social Driver?

Online Search

Why did you select Social Driver over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit

How many teammates from Social Driver were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We have worked on a number of projects with Social Driver, but the one I can talk about here was a series of pages they created for an event series we did. We hosted one event in San Francisco in May and another related event in New York in October. We approached Social Driver to see if they could design and develop an event page for each event, a post-event page for each event, and a landing page that would connect you to both. 

We also requested day-of support on event days so they could assist if anything was malfunctioning on the page. The event page consisted of a header, a livestream player, a speakers section, a news and links section, a Q&A section, a sponsor section, and placements for ads. The post-event page was similar but removed the livestream and added in clips from the event. 

The landing page had links to each event. They designed the pages based on some very simple brand guidelines we provided and fully brought it to life. Beyond us providing the content and those brand guidelines, they handled all design and development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The page matched our brand guidelines and brought them to life. The page hosted all elements we requested. The page functioned successfully on desktop and mobile. The page hosted ad units required by our sponsors. People viewed the livestream via the page. We now have an event page template we can re-use in the future.

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

Social Driver uses Asana for project management. It's a great platform to lay out timeline and communicate in one place. They are great about sticking to deadlines and communicating any questions or needs. Events can be tricky because we often don't get all the info until very close to the event, but they put in placeholder info and were patient as we collected final assets.

What was your primary form of communication with Social Driver?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They are kind, communicative, and organized! They are also willing to work on fairly short deadlines, and make vague ideas come to life. They are a great partner in getting from the idea step to the actual creation step.

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

Not really!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief marketing and communications officer at a nonprofit organization. We are the consumer reports of K-12 instructional materials and provide free educator-led reviews of nearly 100% of the instructional material market in English, arts, math, and science.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Social Driver?

We hired them to redesign our website, which is our primary product, where we offer free reviews. The website is bespoke because there is no other organization like us. We had many challenges around UI/UX design because of the amount of data we provided to educators. Therefore, we wanted to make the site more user-friendly. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Social Driver has redesigned our website and developed a UX strategy for us. We already have our user personas and have provided them with existing brand guidelines. Social Driver has helped us make the site's data more bite-sized and digestible for our end users, focusing on tuning our design to modernize it. They've also worked around UI design and suggested buttons, colors, and placements. 

They've delivered around 12–14 different designs for our website using InVision, and we've implemented most of them and reengaged with Social Driver numerous times. Social Driver has also helped us apply a filter function in our report center, helping us think through the language on the filters to make them understandable for our users. 

Although we couldn't implement all of their ideas in the first round due to timing, we plan to implement a data display that guides the user to what they're looking for in our next design round. 

Our organization started in 2015, and we're in the scaling phase of our work, so we're currently working with Social Driver to refresh another section of our website. We're also considering the possibility of them supporting us with our email strategy. 

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager, a UX designer, a graphic designer, and a content strategist from Social Driver. 

How did you come to work with Social Driver?

We found them through Clutch and selected them after doing a rigorous RFP. Social Driver provided the best strategy and examples of work with other nonprofit education clients. Therefore, we believed they saw our vision to make our website more user-friendly. 

Moreover, Social Driver demonstrated they could guide a user through a large amount of data through a medical site they had designed. They introduced innovative ideas that we really appreciated. 

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent around $200,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in November 2020. Our first engagement was completed in 2021, but we renewed our contract with them in 2022 and 2023, so our collaboration is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of Social Driver's work is incredible. The most relevant KPI is session duration, which we've seen double since we launched Social Driver's design. Meanwhile, page views have lessened because the new design has reduced users' clicks to get the right information. The user interaction is now streamlined. 

Everything Social Driver presents to us is really well thought-through and organized. They always have good reasoning behind their choices and are prepared to explain that. Moreover, the team professionally pushes back on us when we want something they believe isn't best practice. Overall, they've been wonderful partners and taught us a lot. 

How did Social Driver perform from a project management standpoint?

They're clear about the timelines and scope and are very cognizant of our budget since we're a nonprofit. If we're nearing our maximum budget, they give us choices. Social Driver is very collaborative in offering all the options and tailoring the scope of work to meet our needs while staying within a very defined budget. 

As for communication, all our meetings are strategic and organized. They use InVision to show us design mock-ups and get our feedback, and they're wonderful at taking that feedback and being responsive to it. We use Asana for project management and Google Meet for our meetings. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team Social Driver has brought together is fantastic; it's clear how experienced and knowledgeable they are. We've been really pleased with how they listen to us and push us on our thinking about the overall website strategy. The little details they've suggested for the site's UI design have made a big difference. 

We've been beyond satisfied with Social Driver's customer service — the whole team is lovely. We've recommended them to other organizations already. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We've developed a camaraderie and are really friendly with them. Because of that, they may not be pushing us as hard as they could. After launch, we conducted focus groups on the primary section of our website, and the site still has some UX design issues. 

While Social Driver isn't to blame, I believe they may have ceded some ground on things that weren't the best decisions by us while trying to please us as a customer. However, I would like them to push us harder in the future. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Let your service provider lean in with their expertise, whether it's Social Driver or someone else. If you hire someone, it's for their expertise. Although you may have specific needs, you're going to experts to guide you; letting them do that is money well spent.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Deputy Director of Community Word Project

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Provide multi-disciplinary, arts education programming to under-resourced public schools in New York City.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Social Driver to accomplish?

• Refresh brand with website redesign
• Integrate two websites under the brand umbrella

SOLUTION

How did you find Social Driver?

Online Search

Why did you select Social Driver over others?

• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned
• Accessibility Assurance

How many teammates from Social Driver were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Social Driver recommended a four-phase approach to the website development project:

1. Strategy & Requirements:
   • Project Kick-off
   • Strategic Discovery
   • Research & Analytics
   • Technology Discovery
   • Workflow Audits
2. UX & Design:
   • Creative Intake
   • Creative Concepts
   • Element Design
   • CMS Platform Selection & Setup
   • User Experience (UX)
   • Analytics & Interfaces
3. Development: 
   • Front-End HTML/CSS
   • Custom Dev Services & API Dev
   • Content Migration
   • Content Production
   • Feedback & Refinements
4. Launch:
   • Quality Assurance (QA)
   • Documentation & Training
   • Go-Live Checklist
   • Launch & DNS Propagation
   • Go-Live Support

Deliverables in each of the four phases:

1.  
   • Content Audit
   • Sitemap + Wireframes
   • Content Migration Plan
   • Project Roadmap
2.  
   • Logo designs: Primary and Secondary and SM Profile
   • Brand Style Guide
   • Element Collage
   • Page Designs
3.  
   • Content Migration
   • Beta Website Delivery
4.  
   • Launch Plan
   • Post-Launch Support
   • Recommendations

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Areas where we see progress is

1. our ability to have control of website updates in WordPress (former website used a language no staff was trained in).
2. increase in the accessibility rating of overall design.
3. increase in unique visitors to website one year since launching.
4. website design helps inform all other branded designs, from brochures to marketing eBlasts.

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

Project Management was effective. There were times that delays originated on our end, but their ability to adjust schedules was essential to the project. We saw timely delivery on key items throughout the project. Social Driver was patient with our needs.

One of our value statements is Intentional Collaboration. So, in our efforts to build a small team of stakeholders to help make decision, the process may have been burdened. They were able to support through flexibility in scheduling and patience while our team worked through the decision making process.

What was your primary form of communication with Social Driver?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Social Driver's team, not unlike ours, is composed of a talented, passionate, and diverse group of people who bring their expertise, personalities, and sense of humor to the process.

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

In the course of the project, under the constrains of the pandemic and our unintended inability to make agile, quick decisions, we requested that the Social Driver team be more direct about deadlines and extra costs associated with missed deadlines, so that we could stay on track and on budget.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a former director of a social impact consultancy company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Social Driver?

We supported large federal and private nonprofit grants for an end client's project. We needed assistance with the project's marketing strategy.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Social Driver helped us create our marketing and communications strategy. 

What is the team composition?

I worked with one teammate from Social Driver.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2022. Although I left the company before our engagement was concluded, our project was scheduled to end in April 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Social Driver’s team was a wonderful contributor to our project and met our end client’s expectations. 

How did Social Driver perform from a project management standpoint?

Social Driver stayed on budget. All the requested work was delivered on time, and we had good communication. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything for Social Driver to improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend pursuing an engagement with Social Driver — they’re a wonderful company to work with.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Technical Assistance Collaborative (TAC) is a nonprofit consultancy that provides policy leadership on affordable housing and human services systems at the federal, state, and local levels.

As Communications Designer, I manage design, production, and Section 508 accessibility remediation of all outgoing products and client deliverables for print/digital contexts.

I also support our Communications Director with brand upkeep and assets for internal and external communications, email and social media campaigns, and co-manage the website.

I joined TAC in Fall of 2019, just as the company was migrating to a new ESP and gearing up for a major website redesign to replace the last iteration of the site in 2012.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Social Driver?

The previous iteration of TAC's website was optimized for desktop performance and predated the era of mobile-responsive design. Because we did not have the technical capacity to do the redesign ourselves to standard, my supervisor and I led our organization's procurement process for a full-service digital design agency.

In addition to site migration, we needed help customizing a CMS to our needs and setting up an app that would allow us to update large quantities of searchable housing and voucher data.

We also wanted help restructuring the site to minimize visible redundancy of links on the old site and improve user experience navigating towards our focus areas, project work, and resource areas. Although we were sold on the digital and marketing strategy, this was not our primary concern given our budget.

SOLUTION

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

Our list of possible procurement candidates comprised recommendations from TAC's partners in the affordable housing and services sectors. After submitting a proposal and entertaining bids from three firms in Summer 2020, we chose Social Driver.

Although Social Driver offered the highest bid, we felt they had the most well-rounded team for our needs, particularly when it came to updating data and making it available and searchable to our users who come to our website for resources and state-specific information regarding qualifications for housing vouchers and supplemental security income.

We also felt that their portfolio of client work demonstrated the greatest variety of design solutions for companies big and small and felt reassured that our brief wouldn't be shoe-boxed into a one-size fits all solution.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

I would describe 5 major phases

1. Intake and Mockups
2. Map New Site Structure
3. Migrate Content,
4. Handle Data and Forms
5. Final Touches, Debugging, and CMS Training.

Following several intake meetings to discuss our goals, we received three initial mockups of design directions for the website including theme palette, typography, and icons.

Once we committed to a basic direction, SD's team built out assets to support that vision and mockup various "master pages"/wireframes showing those assets in context (these assets were later adapted into modular components for Elementor that we could recycle in building pages ourselves).

These designs were communicated to us through InVision interface, which gave us a good idea of how a prototypical web page would look and which allowed us to provide feedback.

In the mapping phase, we brainstormed with their UX-specialist what the new site structure should look like and used a mapping tool to help us determine how content on the old site was to be propagated under which headings and sections in the new site.

At later phases in the process, we discussed how to migrate tabular data through a third-party app, curated marquee images/ icons for key landing pages, and worked out kinks in mobile responsive breakpoints, content rescaling, and some bugs in the calculation and presentation of our data tables.

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

Our Communications Director and I worked with a team of about 6 people including a project manager, a UX strategist, two graphic designers, and a database/data visualization specialist.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The B2B nature of our nonprofit organization and abstract concept of our work in systems alignment requires that we keep a lower profile than ground agencies who can use images of the communities they work with to promote their organization.There were many stakeholder-defined limitations on what kind of TAC work we could promote on our website, when, and how often.

Social Driver helped us navigate our thorny self-promotion issues and accessibility concerns while creating interface solutions that empowered us to do certain in things in-house like updating tabular data (rather than keep in the possession of someone more technical than us). Social Driver brought our antiquated 2012 website us up to speed in the mobile responsive era and helped us hit our target launch date in six months.

They made our site easier to navigate for potential clients, integrate our website/request forms with Mailchimp to automatically enter newsletter subscribers into our mailing list. And stakeholders have responded favorably to the visual renovation of the site and the relative ease of finding information through the untangled maze of links.

Although we are still working on bringing up our metrics, we have seen marginal uptick in visits to our site that have resulted in several new federal grants and attracted the business of larger clients to work with TAC’s consultants in ensuring better affordable housing and health outcomes through a racial equity lens.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I would describe the workflow as efficient yet flexible. We had an excellent and spirited project manager who delegated responsibilities through Asana and made sure everyone stayed on topic and deadline and had their opinions heard.

The UX specialist on our team was also very affable and reassuring when it came to mapping out the migration process from the old and getting us set up with Google Analytics. We are also grateful to Social Driver’s design team for entertain several iterations of a design concept to better hit the brief.

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

We think that the women-led team made the Communications Director and I feel welcome at the table. Who would have imagined, programmers and designers with people skills makes a huge difference. They could have laughed us out of the room at several points, but they were very accommodating. They worked effectively as a team, kept the mood upbeat, participatory, and always demonstrated that they had listened to or incorporated our feedback even as they nudged us towards better alternatives.

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

The one area where internal stakeholders expressed some disappointment was the loss of more granular tracking for Google Analytics. We had ways of tracking downloads at a more granular level on the old site and engagement and queries from specific states, which must have got sacrificed in providing a Google Sheets workflow that let us perform the data updates in house.

Second, after the initial contract period expires, the quality of customer service during the infinitely long and expensive maintenance period drops slightly because you are entrusted to the care of someone who was not there during the initial process and may not feel as emotionally invested or attentive as those on the original agency team who are with you from the start of the project.

It would be nice if Social Driver delegated one person from the original team to hang on during the maintenance period rather than disappear cold turkey, but since we are in the midst of talks for a new project with Social Driver, our opinion may change.