What was the scope of their involvement?
With what Springbox is doing, we’ll be able to consolidate a lot of our websites and bring them all into a new website. They are building the site from scratch using Drupal. Springbox does really well with their worship formula. We brought in all the key stakeholders from the library: the digital team, archivists, museum curators, education specialists, our people from volunteer and visitor services. Our first workshop was to figure out all the needs of each department. Then we looked at how they’re not being served in the digital space. We talked through different scenarios and were able to distinguish the major audience that would be visiting the site. This was really helpful, not only for our internal folks to talk through things that weren’t working well, but it gave us a much better understanding of what everyone else is doing.
From step one, Springbox had immediate buy-in. Everyone could see how a new website would serve everyone’s needs.
We had a lot of existing content. They did a really thorough audit of our content which had never been done before. There were 50 plus years of content. We looked to see what was working. Springbox is big on using data to support what we think might be working. They could show us what we should include or work on. They also created content in our life and legacy section. We’re diving into subjects of our particular president’s legislation. Springbox has done a lot of work there with content strategists and copywriters.
They’re building out our CRM and the SEO is built in; it best works when we share on Facebook. That’s as far as we’ve gone with Springbox because we handle a lot of that internally. They’ve given us a CMS that will work and is mobile friendly.
How did you come to work with Springbox?
Our library sits on a university campus. I had worked at the university, and I was there when Springbox was leading the major redesign of the university website. Springbox would always come to our meetings to give updates. I knew that if a local agency could tackle such a large project and continuously give us updates, I knew they could tackle this project for the library. There is a lot of bureaucracy when working with a university, and with the library being a federal entity, I knew they would also have the savviness to work with a government organization. There can be a lot of hoops to jump through. We sometimes don’t move as fast, and it’s important to have an agency that understands that but could also be flexible and adaptive to that.
I looked at other companies, but Springbox was always my number one choice. I knew they would be great as far as UX/UI and development. We knew we were going to need a content management system that would have a lot of customization. We needed someone who could do all that in-house which Springbox can do. The library has had previous experiences with agencies who promise all these things, but they end up contracting part of the UX out or copywriting, etc. We wanted an agency who could do all of those things and do each of them well.
How much have you invested with them?
The initial scope of work was $275,000 and we added an additional scope of work for $30,000. We do envision going back to them for other things. We haven’t hit all of the points that we wanted to yet.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with them in January 2017, and the work is ongoing. We have an estimated launch date of September.
Springbox helped the non-profit discover their audience and create ways to engage them and new people through various marketing efforts. The non-profit now has a stronger brand and can increase awareness of their organization. They are also in the process of creating a digital marketing strategy together.