SpurIT

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the general manager at Loctus-Blockchain, a Shopify startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SpurIT?

We needed to establish a trustworthy presence online and needed to be better optimized for keywords. We wanted to be better ranked in a Google search and to have a better-looking website for customers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SpurIT designed our website to make it look better and be easier to navigate. They did some coding but not a lot. We worked on a Shopify platform and we chose a certain theme. Their goal was to join those themes together and code a little bit to adjust some features and make them better and more suitable for my product.

They checked the quality of my listings, images, and descriptions related to Google requirements. Their team made some suggestions that I accepted and others I didn’t because of the price.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager, a salesperson, a few coders, and a couple of Google Ads specialists who focus on advertising.

How did you come to work with SpurIT?

I was looking for a company that could help with a Shopify platform. I looked at Fiverr for Shopify experts and wasn’t successful. Then I checked the Shopify website and I learned that they can hire experts. I posted my requirements and received 5-6 offers.

One of them was SpurIT. I chose them because their pricing was better for me and they were from Belarus and I’m Russian. We speak the same language. It’s easier to communicate with someone in your native language.

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested between $5,000–$6,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2020-February 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The most important thing was optimization. So far, I don’t have any data on that. Overall, I see that we changed the look of my website. They improved my appearance. The quality of work is decent and fair. I got what I wanted. I had a moderate budget and they were able to meet my needs.

How did SpurIT perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was highly professional and on time. I didn’t have to ask twice ever. They replied promptly and their responses were fully comprehensive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their speed of work and flexibility they had. They listened to me and also brought some ideas. They were able to discuss and brought up really valid points so that I could understand what they were wanting to do.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I would change.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re quite knowledgeable and have good expertise.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the General Manager of Madam Glam, a New York City based start-up beauty brand founded in 2014.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Spur-It to migrate our website from Magento to Shopify and to create an unique user experience by developing a custom VIP membership with recurring and monthly billing. Since then, Spur-IT because our exclusive IT agency and is assisting us for all our daily needs.

SOLUTION

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

We did select SpurIT because they were listed as preferred "Shopify Pro" partners. We had a few companies in competition and we decided to go with the most professional and competent one.

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

1) Migration from Magento 1.9.2.4 to Shopify

2) Pre Order Manager Customization based on Teddy Blake's development

•  application cloning
• file uploading process
• delivery dates storage
• updating availability information on the store front
• displaying availability info on the product page
• file downloading
• file removal / shipping information cleanup
• new order webhooks processing
• server setup and deploy process

3) Complete API & 3PL integration with Shopify

4) VIP Membership functionality and API

5) 30 Shopify Applications set up and enhancement

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

1. General Manager
2. Sales representative
3. designers
4. Developers
5. Project Manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SpurIT has been and is still amazing. They moved from being a consultant, agency to being our IT trusted partner. We have been working with them for years now and are extremely satisfied with their professionalism, dedication.

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

Fast to answer and extremely polite and professional, it is amazing to count on companies like this to handle your projects.

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

their aptitude to help scale a business and their empathy to answer all your needs, even the most complicated / complex ones.

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

Nothing to report! Perfect from start to finish!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I run an e-commerce business that sells digital planners and planner accessories for consumers. It's an eco-friendly way to use physical planners, which have the look and feel of physical planners.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SpurIT?

I hired SpurIT to redesign our homepage and layout because it wasn't looking as professional as we wanted it to. They did an excellent job of executing the project. The homepage now looks very professional, artistic, and eye-catching.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to give my consumers a level of trust in my website. If they felt as though it looked professional and well put together, it would persuade them to buy. SpurIT did an excellent job at conveying that to our consumers in the way they designed our web page.

SOLUTION

How did you select SpurIT?

I selected SpurIT through Shopify.

Describe the project in detail.

As far as the project, I really had no idea how to get my website to look more professional and trustworthy. So after I hired them for the job, I laid out all the things that I wanted my consumers to feel when they saw my website.

They took that information and implemented it into their designs. The result of that was a very illustrative and cohesive website.

What was the team composition?

Team communication was very good. I had two people from the team communicate with me via WhatsApp to get the project done how I wanted. They shared with me the steps and the gradual process. They were very friendly and prompt with their responses.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I would say the project was very successful because immediately after the implementation of the new website look, I got a lot of great feedback from consumers that the website looked great. I also made a sale immediately after the launch of the new web layout.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They made communication very easy. They were always very friendly and prompt with their responses. If I ever had any questions or suggestions, they took them into consideration, which I liked. I also liked how they showed a lot of care in the details and making sure my website looked better than my competitions.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

What I found most impressive was how skilled they are in coding and illustrating when it comes to making a website look top notch. It's definitely a skill they have that I don't think I could find as easily with another company. They have those skills coupled with their professionalism and timeliness in getting the project done.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I was satisfied with the work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

ProNorth Medical Corporation is a healthcare provider in the scope of Veterinary, Dental, and Medical products and devices. I am the sales and marketing manager, as we are a small family run business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our website was created in 2011 and it was outdated. Understanding how much work, strategy, and ongoing support is needed to run a successful e-commerce business, we knew we needed a team of experts to achieve our goals. SpurIT worked diligently to listen carefully to our goals and helped us achieve a brand new website, with marketing and SEO taken care of.

SOLUTION

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

We had a few Shopify Experts reach out to us. We interviewed all of them, and SpurIT was the clear choice in professionalism, experience, and communication.

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

We had a kick-off meeting, and they asked all of the right questions and asked who we are catering to, and really dug into what was needed from us to become a successful player in our healthcare field. Everything from market research, testing phases, and ongoing support, they build our company back from the ground up. Very impressed with them.

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

We worked mostly with our business manager or account rep if you will, Anastasia. Our developer Vlad. And there was a team of individuals behind them to see this through.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After launching our site we had our first $5,000 in sales day, and $10,000 in sales month. We have never been busier!

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

We used a daily chat in WhatsApp and had business meetings from time to time but we always had great clear communication with Anastasia and Vlad. As they are based in Belarus and we are in Canada, it was critical for time difference to be in a group chat to discuss everything.

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

The level of professionalism, detail, and willingness to go beyond the expectation of our needs was impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They are great!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of project management for a digital lab. We have a lot of enterprise partners and we have our own startups and our partner startups. We focus on high-level strategy to see how we can improve them technologically by finding and building technology products that can move the needle towards their yearly goals. 

On a startup level, we have our startups and we own percentage income service. We basically give growth umbrellas to get them on the path of growth. We give them all the resources they need in terms of HR, accounting, technology, product management, design, content management, etc.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SpurIT?

We needed help building a Shopify website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built the revamp of our e-commerce and Shopify website; only handling the development. It was a really design heavy website and wasn’t a typical Shopify site. They took the site to extreme levels and went around the rules of Shopify to extend it as much as possible, building a template from scratch for a lot of extra functionalities. 

They use apps when necessary. We launched the project in November 2019 but we continued to work with them on fixes and improvements.

What is the team composition?

I directly worked with the project manager, an account manager, and the head of sales.

How did you come to work with SpurIT?

We asked Shopify for a list of Shopify partners that they recommend and SpurIT was on the list. Our main target was someone who could take Shopify to its limits. We wanted to make sure someone is building apps for that platform already and knew the technology resources needed in order to do that.

Looking at SpurIT, they have a lot of apps built-in Shopify that they sell themselves and most of them had really good reviews and ratings.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $350,000–$450,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2019–July 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality and speed of work is good. They have a lot of creative solutions in order to reach the deadlines we had. Accessibility was a requirement for us and we knew it was going to be a learning curve for SpurIT to get up to speed, so our in-house accessibility auditor worked with them. 

It’s great because then they had their own accessibility practice and became experts in it. Their company grew in a way that showed they understood the market and built practices based on it. 

How did SpurIT perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was good; they were excellent in meeting deadlines. There were some delays here and there, but that’s normal in any software project. There were some hiccups with communication over time, but overall, it was still great. We were shocked that they had a project manager we could speak to rather than the developer. Things were perfect and we felt as if we were speaking directly to the developer.

We saw an improvement in SpurIT across our engagement together. From where we started until the end, we saw a lot of improvements in how they work and how polished their deliverables got over time. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing is how they change processes depending on the project and are able to cope with the processes that we asked for. There was a lot of flexibility on their side, they were adaptable, and experts in Shopify. 

They saw what we needed and asked for the expectations and deliverables we wanted. They followed the steps accordingly. It was great and I definitely enjoyed working with them.

One thing you don’t easily find in contracting a company is the level of care they had. They actually cared about the work they delivered and went the extra mile to ensure the work was good. They’d have suggestions and we’d take them to make the product better. I’d recommend them to anyone.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In the beginning of the project, we had problems with accessibility but they got much better. By the end of the project, they were experts. They actually have a standalone practice for accessibility now. 

We had to change our meeting frequency from once a week to three times a week to make sure they understood everything about our standards to be successful. Because of that, I think they need standardization in the follow-ups and status updates. All the other communication is great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re looking for a Shopify website, SpurIT is one of the best choices that you can find in the market in terms of development, but I can’t speak to the design and other things they do on their end. Work with their project manager and head of sales as a team. Make sure you have two points of contact and not just one.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

VocalMist is an online webstore offering niche products for singers. Our flagstaff product is a nebulizer that helps encourage proper function of the voice and encourage vocal health for singers, teachers, and professional voice users. I am the owner of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our online store was designed piecemeal from basic themes on Shopify, but ended up convoluted and clunky. SputIT stepped in to reimagine the site with focus on clear conversion flow, and easy choices for customers. The redesign also required custom functionality builds around my Shopify apps.

SOLUTION

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

We received several quotes on our needs, and SpurIT was the all-in-one shop we wanted for the redesign and custom functionality builds. Their reviews were high, and the lower cost/higher quality ratio was just what we were looking for.

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

SpurIT first had several conversation with me to create a full action plan of all my needs with quotes. They then gained access through my Shopify store to build out the custom theme and custom apps.

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

I had one main contact (Anastasia) who reached out regularly with updates, and then was also on a thread with 2-3 developers actively working on the redesign.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our relaunch timing unfortunately aligned with the beginning of the pandemic, so measuring and comparing strict metrics is difficult. However, our multiple-product purchase rate (with the SpurIT custom popup builds) has gone up around 75% with the products we were attempting to push!

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

Communication was clear and concise. My main contact was kind enough to continually check on me if I got sidetracked for a few days :D

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

Having the 'full package' in one place was SO much easier to deal with rather than contracting out different pieces of the puzzle. Communication and price made this a pleasurable experience :)

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

SpurIT's invoicing can look a little confusing, as it uses bank accounts in different countries, but otherwise things were straightforward.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Bloomist is an online brand that curates and creates simple, beautiful goods for the nature-inspired home. And we source our products from a global community of artisans, designer-makers, and ethical suppliers who do good for the planet and humanity through what they make.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We have been using the spurIT pre order app to allow for products to continue to be sold after sell out, up to certain order limits (eg, over sold).

We were finding that the app would sometimes have caching issues where the users would not see the app, but would instead see "sold out' or some other incorrect message such as ""buy now". We needed the page to force refresh to ensure users were seeing the most up to date status.

SOLUTION

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

SpurIT developed the original app, but we also looked at other partners that we currently work with to see if there were any better solutions. SpurIT had the most experience as well as offered a fair price for the service.

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

SpurIT developed, tested and deployed a caching solution that required no work from the user, that automatically refreshed the page. They developed it quickly and at a fair price. We were happy with the work and are discussing additional projects with them currently.

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

2, project manager and technical consultant.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SpurIT developed the solution quickly and at a fair price. We were happy with the work and are discussing additional projects with them currently. As we very much rely on pre-sales, this was critical to our operations.

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

Timely and up to date - aside from occasional time differences.

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

Great work on shopify pre order apps! One of a kind in this regard.

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

Working from Belarus, we do understand there are natural challenges, such as wiring payments, and unfamiliar contracts. Of course they were apologetic about that.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Irresistible Me is a leading US-based hair extension e-commerce brand. Founded in 2012, headquartered in NYC and selling mainly in the US. I am the company's CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SpurIT?

To migrate our website irresistibleme.com from Magento to Shopify Plus.

What were your goals for this project?

Improve website stability and overall performance, and being able to leverage the Shopify Plus Apps ecosystem.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We talked with numerous e-commerce platform migration specialized agencies, exposing our needs and budgets. Spur IT was the best in terms of ratio budget/quality.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They helped us migrate our entire e-commerce website from Magento to Shopify Plus. Moving our entire database of clients, orders, and product pages from one platform to the other. They also help us set up the back-end to improve our internal operations' efficiency, they also developed two custom Apps specifically for us: one to enable API communications between our website and our 3PL's backend and one to enable us to short-sell (displaying a custom front-end message to clients warning them about shipping delays). We produced mock-ups of how exactly we wanted the Shopify front-end to look like, working with web designers.

What was the team composition?

The team was led by a duo of one account manager and one lead developer + a few developers and database specialists.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Irresistible Me created its e-commerce website on Magento in 2012, along the first years of the company's existence many different pieces of code were added, often by different CTOs, making the website slow and very unstable. Moving successfully to Shopify Plus had a direct impact on website's speed and as a result a direct observable improvement in conversion rate. It also enabled our team to be much more agile in terms of UX changes and design tryouts.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was very effective with very recurring calls and feedback loops.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Communication was good and everything was handled according to planning. The value for money was especially interesting.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Everything was done according to plan and up to expectations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an entrepreneurial group of executive directors working on developing a new business model in the e-com space. Our core business is not the products we provide but the business model we have created.

We have developed a custom e-com user experience where we allow our products to be borrowed and returned as a service. As the CEO my core responsibility is preparing and implementing the company and launch strategy to enter the market and drive growth thereafter.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SpurIT?

As every e-com platform that's out there is built and optimised for transacting product sales, we knew we would have to scope and develop our intended market offering based on an e-com platform that fundamentally wasn't designed to do what we need it to do.

Our challenge was to ensure the front end UX was seamless and the financial risk management associated with borrowing products to customers was minimised and the whole process is automated as much as possible. We decided to develop our offering based on the Shopify platform with a custom app developed to run the service.

We did not want to charge customers full payment upfront for the products and then issue a refund when they were returned. That's just an everyday e-com returns process and would mean the customer was charged fully for the products upfront.

We required a custom way to charge the customer for the borrowing service upfront and defer a 2nd payment for the actual products that were borrowed. The 2nd payment is then cancelled as long as the products are returned. We looked at buy now pay later options such as Klarna etc, but fundamentally they just offer e-com shoppers an unsecured credit line.

They are in the business taking the consumer credit risk in return for a % transaction fee for the value of sales their service facilitates across standard e-com websites, so this wasn't going to work for our business model.

We settled on using Shopify's standard payment gateway providers as this offers a standard check out process for the customers pov while we maintain control over the all-important checkout process.

We commissioned a development project to build a custom Shopify app that splits the cart value into a service charge that is billed upfront and defers the 2nd payment for the products until 30 days later. Our returns process is self-serviced by the customer and as long as the products arrive back in our warehouse prior to the 30 days the 2nd payment is auto cancelled, ending the sales cycle.

The whole end-to-end customer journey/ux/ui is slick, automated and simple. As an added bonus, we do not have the restrictions and headaches of integrating a 3rd party buy now pay later provider, nor have to pay their transaction fees on our sales!

What were your goals for this project?

Given our overall business goal was to take a new business model to market, we sought to appoint a trusted development team who were Shopify experts, were capable of grasping the scope of works and had the experience to be able to deliver the overall development project.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We scoped various RFQ jobs to break the overall development into key milestone phases.

A small pilot job was issued to 6 providers for the purpose of assessment against key criteria, commercial, tech, track record etc. 6 became 3, became 1 throughout our RFQ process which ran a scoring system through to appointment for the remaining RFQ's. Spur IT was outstanding throughout the process and really did leave the completion behind.

Not only from a technical and know-how standpoint but also through their commercial engagement and can-do attitude, even though at the time they did not have knowledge of the bigger development scope!

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The key requirement was to have a proven track record in developing custom Shopify apps, bringing knowledge of the platform architecture and programming languages, namely Liquid, JavaScript/JSON, Shopify Theme and Schema development.

Also, know-how about integrating custom apps within the Shopify platform and adding virtual machines on AWS where the custom app operates from. Working from detailed RFQs that we produced, Spur IT estimates each of the scopes of work and once instructed, project manage the work and from start to our testing and user acceptance.

What was the team composition?

From the start, commercial engagement is handled by a single point of contact within the Sput IT organisation.

Day-to-day we have an extremely helpful account manager who liaises internally with the dev team to turn around very precise estimations for each of our dev projects with detailed delivery timescales and narrative around possible issues that may need to be considered and/or revised scope if needed.

I'm unsure of the number of dev's involved in our projects. For us, the size of the team doesn't matter. What's important to us is great project management, clear and accurate communication and on-time delivery of each project. Spur IT exile in all these areas.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Spur IT quickly built our confidence in their ability. They demonstrated that our project was as important to them as it was to us. They offered sound advise. Are responsive to our needs.

Took time to understand our business goals and put resources in place that work harmoniously to deliver results, being great development work, and a quick turnaround at super competitive rates. We have now completed a number of projects with Spur IT valued at over $10k+ and look forward to many more.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Unlike some vendors who say "we charge you for the actual project work and then we also charge extra to manage our work", with Spur IT you get project management baked into the project. We take a lot of time to prepare detailed documentation for each of the projects so the scope is very well understood upfront.

Spur IT say this is the number of dev hours required to do what you have specified and this is when we can have it done by. Everything else is the value-added service that we enjoy from them.

They effectively deliver on schedule and on budget every time without additional (and billable) unnecessary project management work that some vendors like to throw into pricing up projects. It's refreshingly simple to do business and manage projects with Spur IT.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

SpurIT impresses us most in their ability to grasp any scope of work we give them, offer sound advise to firm this into an actionable costed timeline agreement and then they simply deliver it. Every time without fail and with fuss.

Anything picked up in our user acceptance testing is dealt with by Spur IT in a super-efficient manner. Over a number of projects have earnt the position in our minds as a trusted adviser for our development road map.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We struggle to find any words to suggest how Spur IT can improve their service. Their practices are above expectations for us as a client of theirs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We sell autographed collectibles on line for our e-commerce company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SpurIT?

SpurIT helped us design software that would allow our company to import data via 3rd party API

What were your goals for this project?

We were looking to be able to bring in data automatically verse Manual uploads each hour, each day, each week. This was to update product listings on many levels and to delist product that was no longer available.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

SpurIT was recommended by Shopify & has built a lot of 5-star Apps. This more than sold us on them being qualified for the job.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They designed, built, programmed, tested, & installed this program on the front end/back end of our web site in record time.

What was the team composition?

We had worked with the project manager and the developer the entire way through the project. Updates were given weekly and response time was very prompt.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

SpurIT under promised and over delivered. They were done early and the system worked as it was designed. We then hired them to do the 2nd phase and now the 3rd phase.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

As mentioned above. They were exceptional.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were very professional and met deadlines. Most importantly, they knew how to do everything we asked & with different options.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No