Straight North

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an integrator of industrial robotic solutions.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I am the CEO and CTO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Straight North?

Currently, they represent the majority of my digital marketing activities. At the moment, I don't have any marketing staff, so I view them as my digital marketing staff.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They've built my website, so we went through the whole development process. The premise behind the development of the website was we led with SEO [search engine optimization] research upfront, so it was optimized essentially in development.

Then, when we got into other SEO programs, they helped to write the content. They do a sensational job at writing content; I'm impressed with their writers. We're about to launch our first email campaign, so Straight North is also helping me with email campaign development.

How did you come to work with Straight North?

It was pretty straightforward, actually. I didn't expect to get to the short list the way I did. From my previous experience having my prior employer's website developed, Drupal was the engine I definitely was interested in using.

I decided to use Drupal for this firm. I searched for a Drupal developing partner that knows online marketing in the Midwest. Quite frankly, I only got two or three possible matches, and Straight North was one of them. I talked to Straight North and a couple other companies, and I just felt more comfortable with Straight North. It was amazing how that took a plethora of companies, and knocked it down to a select few in a matter of a couple of clicks.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It's between $10,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them since late January 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I am satisfied with their performance. I am very pleased with the fact that, when we launched our website, we were able to start to see positive results in the browser searching. We started to appear in the top searches in a relatively short amount of time. They've been a tremendous help with writing website content, especially for blogs and things like that. They have sensational writers, in my opinion – outstanding work.

I will tell you that, although we have a lot of work left to do on our website, it's been very effective. I would say in less than a year, in the first nine months, we've had about 20 good quality leads – real solid leads. We've had a lot more inquiries, but I'm talking about 20 sound leads. Of that, we got three orders. We've already reaped the return on the website investment. It paid for itself, in the first nine months.

What distinguishes Straight North from other providers?

Straight North really works as a cohesive team. I think you hear many companies say that they do that, but when you really work with them, I don't necessarily find other companies to be so cohesive. They are truly a very cohesive group, so they're easy to work with.

Is there anything Straight North could have improved or done differently?

Maybe if they would provide more vision for our business, knowing my circumstances. They are my marketing department, so it would be good if they would come back and maybe show me examples of other strategies to grow and advance.

I want some real solid recommendations to grow not just the website, but the whole digital marketing approach, but primarily focused on the website. I have some of my own ideas, but it'd be nice if they came back with their expertise. That way, I could try to bring focus to resources I have internally to help get that information.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're actually part of a larger company that owns several smaller companies and those companies have a combined management team. It's sort of like the automotive world in the sense where the business that sells the cars is different from the business that does parts and service. We're structured in a similar way. 

We have numerous different types of businesses where we sell different machines. They're all for material processing of some sort. My business sells industrial mixing equipment. We specialize in high shear mixing. We sell business to business in the sense of selling to people that are manufacturing products with our items. It could be personal care products like shampoos and conditioners. It could be food and beverage or pharmaceutical products. Our customers are manufacturing on a large scale using one of our mixers.

What is your position?

I am the director of the overall liquid mixing business. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Straight North?

The liquids processing business works in a relatively competitive market but it's also a market that people don't know about. Within our market, there's probably 15 competitors of which we're one of the smaller players. That is largely due to market awareness. My projects with Straight North has been around web presence and digital marketing.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Straight North is working for a couple different segments of our business. I'm one of the business leaders of the segments. Their work for my business is larger than what they do for the others.

We generally use their search engine optimization services across the board, and we have four websites that they're helping strengthen from that standpoint. I have authority over one of those websites. We're using them from an SEO [search engine optimization] standpoint as well as a digital marketing standpoint and for PPC [pay-per-click] advertising. They're currently managing campaigns for me in North America and India.

How did you come to work with Straight North?

I have specialized in SEO for some time. I used to do it internally a lot because it's a difficult thing to outsource. I would say for the last decade I've been looking for a good partner to outsource those types of activities to. I had a lot of difficulty outsourcing those efforts and being happy with the quality of service that I was getting as well as the strategic intelligence those groups had. 

I was contacted as part of Straight North's manual outreach program when they were doing link building for a company that has a relationship with us. They had reached out to me working under the name of that particular company, but I realized it was a white hat SEO technique, which was something that many organizations don't practice anymore because the manual portion of it is so labor intensive. But, it's still the best way to build links from an SEO standpoint. 

When I realized that was the case I approached them, and they were a little embarrassed but at the same time I wanted to speak to someone from the sales department because that was the group I wanted to start investigating. It was happenchance the way they came to me but good luck in the end. We've built a relationship up from that point.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Most of our business units fall between $10,000 and $50,000, but the new site development costs more. There will be blips where it goes past $50,000 in some years. My web development project in particular was more than $50,000, but less than $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in November 2014 and there are no plans to stop the engagement. If there's a better partner out there than Straight North, I haven't found it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We definitely see an increase in qualified leads. We've seen a sixfold or sevenfold increase on our qualified lead generation specifically from digital sources. That continues to grow. Right now, we're seeing double digit increases in terms of month over month traffic improvements and conversions.

How did Straight North perform from a project management standpoint?

I'm satisfied, but it still needs more time to play out. SEO campaigns take time to develop. Many of the new sites that we launched have only been live since May 2015. They're only four months old. That's not quite established enough yet to have the rankings that we're looking for, but we're seeing progression every week. I'm very optimistic that we'll get to where we want to be. It'll probably take nine months to a year to establish a presence online for my particular business unit. 

On the PPC side of things, it was a challenge at first to get started with them, and I think that likely stems more from our type of business then it does from their capability to advertise things from a PPC standpoint. 

Our business is unique and many people don't know our world exists. That was a difficult learning curve for Straight North, but they have now gotten to the point where they seem to be able to interpret things correctly for us. But, there was some initial heavy lifting from the PPC standpoint. At the end of the day, I'm satisfied with the results.

What distinguishes Straight North from other providers?

The thing that comes to mind about Straight North is the way they segregate development from their digital marketing teams. When you work with them on different initiatives, Straight North provides a dedicated project manager that handles things like new website development and the evolution of the site itself. We also have a campaign manager that handles all the marketing side of things. Other companies I work have one project manager for every type of project with no specialization.

Is there anything Straight North could have improved or done differently?

In the context of saying they're the best I've worked with there are still areas of improvement. They've gone through those learning curves, but when I first started working with them, I would say the amount of work that they were able to offload from me wasn't as much as I was hoping because their quality control wasn't there. They were making more mistakes than I was comfortable with that I was having to catch and have rectified. That has gone away. They've really made an effort to make sure that their processes were made in such a way that those mistakes are caught before it's presented to me.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I work for Mendel Plumbing and Heating. We're a mid-size contractor to commercial and residential customers for heating, air conditioning, plumbing, and a variety of other services.

What is your position?

I am the president.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Straight North?

The primary goal was to usher our website into current standards for marketing purposes and to help with search engine optimization. We are trying to bring it up to standards and market our site in a way that noncustomers could find us on a more regular basis. People send emails or call us to hire our services.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They started by rebuilding the website. Now, they're continuing to optimize the website for us.

How did you come to work with Straight North?

We've used them in the past. They built a website for us a couple of website generations ago. We were impressed with their work then.

I was with a company before this one in a different industry that was also contracted with Straight North, and I was part of the selection team that brought them in. They rebuilt the website for my former company.

I was just very impressed with them as an overall firm. I like how they manage the entire project – the people they had, as well as the ultimate result. Between previous experience here and previous experience at my other company, they have done terrific work historically that warranted looking at them from a trust standpoint.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was between $10,000 to $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's ongoing work. We've been with them for about a year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

One thing they measure that we're paying attention to is organic search hits. This means somebody who searches for something relevant and doesn't specifically Google us, but they Google something that we do in our area and the question is how many of those type of hits are we showing up on in the front page so that customers have a chance to choose us.

That's one of the key measures we look at month after month and, every month since we've been doing this, that number continues to climb. It shows the work they're doing is growing and its effectiveness, and we're seeing an increased amount of leads month after month.

How did Straight North perform from a project management standpoint?

We are very satisfied with Straight North. We have a monthly update with the team that manages optimizing our website. It's all about results. They present metrics relative to how many new customers that were sourced from the web that arrived at our website and contact us somehow through our website or phone call. They have a tracking number on our website so they monitor all that to be able to give us very concrete and very factual results around the work they're doing.

We interviewed around seven or eight different SEO [search engine optimization] firms before heading back to Straight North and the most difficult thing is everybody can talk a good game. Everybody sounds like they know what they're talking about putting your money where your mouth is and saying you're going to prove it and report in every month is a different story.

Straight North is the only firm that was willing to do that in a concrete way with us. In addition, we did contract with another firm that was large and knew our industry and our area. Their work was horrendous.

In fact, it was so embarrassing we severed ties with them just after the initial work was done because they were very poor at writing content. This is a very reputable firm but, compared to Straight North, they just couldn't get the job done in a way that looked respectable for what we were trying to do.

What distinguishes Straight North from other providers?

Nothing that I haven't already mentioned.

Is there anything Straight North could have improved or done differently?

Nothing that I could cite that would make them more effective. They're just top in their game.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company is Go Fan Yourself. My name is Nikki Heinkel. We are an industrial and commercial HVLS [high-volume low-speed] fan company. We manufacture and provide big ceiling fans for industrial, recreational, and commercial facilities.

What is your position?

I'm the marketing manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Straight North?

We wanted a new website, and we wanted to market the site on Google. Our goal was to revamp our website so it looks cleaner and has more images and text. We needed to be able to take sales leads from our website and turn them into customers.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They provide web design and pay-per-click services for now. We actually just met with them last week to look at doing a few more things such as trade show booths and marketing material.

How did you come to work with Straight North?

The owner of Go Fan Yourself was referred to them by the accounting firm we utilize. We had a strong referral and then the owner and I went in and met with a team at Straight North, which I thought was excellent. 

Straight North brought individuals from all different departments to come together and provide a very strong presentation on how they could take Go Fan Yourself to the next level. After that meeting, we were very excited to begin working with them. They are local so that made it very easy. We used to work with a marketing company out west, and it was very hard. We wanted someone an agency in the same area and understood Chicago.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's ongoing. We're going to keep the PPC campaign running indefinitely because we're getting such great leads. Obviously, we're a fan company so the majority of our business is in the summer. However, fans are still effective in the winter.

I think we're going to continue trying to run a campaign in the winter. Then we'll continue to have them update our website and then look at some more marketing material and trade show exhibits and really try to utilize many of their services because we've been so happy with them. We've been working with them a couple months. I think our website was created mid-July 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We've seen a lot of results especially from our PPC campaign. We've received two orders in our third week via the telephone, which is kind of unheard of in our business. We have many projects in our pipeline that have developed mainly because of the PPC campaign and the redesign of our website. We would have never had this type of traffic before. 

We were trying to grow traffic organically. That does take some time, which Straight North was honest about in the meetings.

Once we did the PPC campaign, it really kicked into high gear. We've seen good results from our relationship with Straight North. If you checked back with me in a month, I could give you exact amount of fans we've sold. It's been great in the short time we've partnered with them.

How did Straight North perform from a project management standpoint?

The results were fantastic. They provided a questionnaire, I gave them the answers, and they were able to take my rambling statements and make it clear on the site. I was so incredibly happy with the content writing along with the design. 

The sections that they were able to come up with and the different industries was so spot-on that it seemed like they worked in the industry for a decade.

What distinguishes Straight North from other providers?

Straight North is very attentive. They meet deadlines. They encourage deadlines. They really explained how everything worked, and I think that goes back to their strong presentation. They laid out a long-term strategy and showed how everything works. They did all the keyword research and analysis for us. I really feel like their capabilities are quite great, and they're able to put together all of their talents and manufacture a good outcome for our company.

Is there anything Straight North could have improved or done differently?

Not that I can think of. We had such a great experience.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are Earthwise Environmental. We are a water treatment company that is centralized in the Chicagoland area. We also have a regional office in Texas. We're expanding into the national market now. 

The product that we deliver is water testing services for commercial, light industry, and institutional buildings that have cooling towers and boilers and need their water managed, which is just about every big business in America.

What is your position?

I'm the controller.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Straight North?

Our biggest aim is to double the size of our business in the next five years. The reason that we went with Straight North to do a website is because ours was very dated and didn't accurately represent our company five years ago when we engaged them.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Right now, we are not using Straight North for anything besides web design work. We're slowly starting to develop a plan around what we're going to do for marketing because we're not going to make our sales goals if we don't start actively working to improve lead generation. As of right now, Straight North helped us with our web design, and we will probably be reaching out to them soon about SEO [search engine optimization].

How did you come to work with Straight North?

We had a sales and marketing manager at the time who had started out working with our previous web designer, and the two of them were working on a design for a rebuild of our website. That project wasn't going very well. The former designer was not as communicative as he needed to be with our marketing manager, who really had never had any experience in marketing management, so it was just destined for failure. 

The owner and I thought we needed to find a new approach. The owner vetted a couple companies – one of which was Straight North – and we looked at the portfolios of the different companies and ended up going with Straight North because we liked what we and their presentation and their dedication to the timeline was really favorable. We wanted to have the new site launched quickly so that we could take advantage of some changes in our industry that were going to be very relevant.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was in the $10,000 to $50,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We finished and launched in March 2015. I think we signed our agreement in September 2014. The whole project came together very quickly.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We've gotten a lot of great comments from our customers because we do have a customer portal on the website. Customers use it to access the data from their service reports. Almost all of our customers have been on the site at least a couple of times in the last year. Everyone has said it's fantastic. Our home page is really striking and the balloon has been very popular from a design perspective. 

How did Straight North perform from a project management standpoint?

We are absolutely satisfied. I didn't personally have a lot of involvement during the process. We did have the sales and marketing manager at the time. I was there for the initial conversations and then when we did the first demonstration of the nearly completed website. I think we had the first six pages done.

I was impressed with their ability to manage the project and keep things moving forward knowing that it's more difficult because it was personal for our owner, and it was extremely nerve wracking for the marketing manager. Straight North did a great job moving things along. The site itself was beautifully designed. 

Straight North did a great job taking our message and our goals and putting it into a website that really reflected that. I've had training with the consultants that they use to teach people how to use Drupal and I'm comfortable with it. They've done a great job of managing that and making sure that I'm happy with the training that I've had. We can update our content ourselves.

What distinguishes Straight North from other providers?

I don't have a lot of experience with other companies like this. I have to say Straight North's attention to detail has been fantastic. They're very patient. When we wanted to make changes and not know what we wanted, they were very accommodating in helping us move the project along and helping us to make decisions and knowing that it wasn't the end of the world.

I think there's a tendency for people to assume the first website design is static and you can't change it later and improve. They did a good job convincing us that it needs to be more dynamic to keep moving forward with our web presence.

Is there anything Straight North could have improved or done differently?

No, not at all. I'm incredibly pleased with the way everything turned out. It more than exceeded my expectations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are Custom Cabinet Source. We make custom cabinets out of wood and wood products. We can build pretty much everything like kitchens, entertainment centers, baths, commercial, residential, and trade shows.

What is your position?

I'm the owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Straight North?

They are our pay-per-click marketing and our website management company. Any questions we have to make people visit our website to get people to look at our business is their responsibility. We don't want to hire a full-time salesperson since we are small and want to save money.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

I am the only office person for my company, which is a small company with less than 10 employees. I'm the manager and the owner so I handle the website inventory section. I had them redesign my website 15 years ago and then a second time in 2014. We use them for pay-per-click marketing and the occasional website redesign.

How did you come to work with Straight North?

The current vice president at Straight North is Aaron Wittersham, and I've known his dad for 15 years from business and found him in his dad's basement when Aaron was working for a startup with a different name.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

An average year is $5,000 for the paid search management without any website redesign and the web design projects cost much more. 

What is the status of this engagement?

It's ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We've seen consistent response in the metrics we're looking for since day one. We don't have a full-time salesperson. Everything we do is word of mouth. Probably 70 percent of my current business 15 years later is the result of website design that was initiated through that entity.

What distinguishes Straight North from other providers?

Straight North has always been at the cutting edge of what they do. Before other people started calling on a daily basis to do SEO [search engine optimization] and pay per click, we were doing it with them 10 to 12 years before that.

Is there anything Straight North could have improved or done differently?

I think they're lacking on the artistic side a little bit. They don't have a full-time graphics design department. The content of your website generally is left up to the customer. Maybe this is a result of budget, too. The overlay, templates, data entry, and formatting is all their end, but to create the website copy is the customer's role. That task is very time consuming since we have many products so it's really the only thing I've ever had issue with.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are the Amish Cabinet Company. We have a show room in Arlington Heights, Illinois. We design and install Amish made cabinets. I'll meet a client and put together a kitchen, a three-dimensional perspective of their kitchen, and then work with an Amish shop that will make the cabinets. The driver will wrap them in furniture blankets, bring them up, and we'll deliver them to the job site.

What is your position?

My title is manager or member of the LLC.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Straight North?

We needed them to make our web design current, and they did a wonderful job with that.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

At this time, they haven't done any internet marketing. That's a possibility down the road. All they did was a redesign on the website.

How did you come to work with Straight North?

I'd seen some of their past projects and was impressed by the design of the websites and creativity. I'm not the most articulate person when it comes to speech, but they were able to create the site with verbiage I support that brings me web traffic and the majority of my new business.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was $10,000 to $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

They finished everything, and it's spectacular.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It seems like most homeowners do a lot of research on their tablets and iPhones. They made it a responsive website that fits perfectly since I have to put on my reading glasses every time to look at stuff on the phone and, when a site is responsive, it fits the phone much nicer. That was huge.

Now, it seems like I'm one step ahead of some other cabinet companies on the web. Also, the way they organized the site itself – making it not cluttered, having too much information, or hard to navigate – is great. 

It seems like it's a very easy to navigate site, which is vital because people would ignore my business if they dislike the website. Those were the two biggest things that I thought were a huge upgrade from the way the website was before. 

I don't have any metrics. I do ask consumers where they found me and this year it seems like a huge percentage have found me on the Internet, which is great. I haven't done any marketing work with them. My business is growing fast, so I have too much work to handle with only two employees here. Straight North has helped me grow my business.

What distinguishes Straight North from other providers?

Their customer service. I worked with Erin [Wozniak, director of project management for Straight North] and her attention to detail, how polite she was outstanding. I'm in the customer service business, so it's very important to me. I felt like Straight North was an extension of my company. They were just very polite, and they listened to me – paid attention to detail.

Is there anything Straight North could have improved or done differently?

I can't come up with anything.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

My business is a CPA [certified public accountant] and financial advisory firm. I'm the sole proprietor, I don't have any other employees. I've been primarily specializing in tax work and investment counseling. I've been in business for about 30 years, and I just needed to put together a website.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Straight North?

The website was meant to get people to call me for work. As a professional services firm, you have to put forth a certain image, so I wanted a high-quality website and Straight North certainly was able to deliver that. In addition, in time, I'm hoping that this new site will help attract clients. I built the website in such a way that I can put articles and other sorts of financial information, newsletters and things online, and if people run across those while they're searching the web, it will draw them to my website.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

For now, it's just been web design, web build, and hosting. We didn't do any pay-per-click yet, but I might at some point.

How did you come to work with Straight North?

I've done some work through the years and put together some websites at other companies that I used to work for, so I was familiar with the process. I wanted somebody local, and I wanted somebody that was not a giant cookie-cutter type company. I wanted some degree of customization but, of course, I'm a small player so I didn't have a lot of money. Cost was important as well. I researched and talked to a number of different firms, and Straight North was able to deliver all those things I needed.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was less than $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project is completed, and the website is up and operational. As I get into it, maybe in the coming years, I might look back to them to get some more marketing activity going.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I'm really satisfied. They did a nice job. It was very easy to work with them. I had a handful of ideas. I showed them some website of some competitors that I thought were effective and functional, and they were able to look at some of those ideas and really improve upon them. They were able to build what I think is a real first-class website for a guy my size.

What distinguishes Straight North from other providers?

They're a good-sized firm, I think they probably have 50 to 60 employees, but I received personalized attention. I had a client services relationship person assigned to me. She was very attentive, really wanted to learn and understand my business, and did a good job at doing that. I think they really melded that sweet spot of size and capability with personalized, hands-on experience. They're a real quality outfit. I was really pleased. I'm glad I picked Straight North, and I'm happy with the website they gave me.

Is there anything Straight North could have improved or done differently?

Nothing comes to mind right off the bat.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company is a commercial recreational products manufacturer in the U.S. We manufacture everything from playgrounds at schools and parks all the way to shelters. We really produce anything from the ground up that you might see in a recreational environment.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I'm the marketing director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Straight North?

Our websites as a whole were lacking. We engaged them to help us on the SEO [search engine optimization] and PPC [pay-per-click] front to bolster quality lead generation.

Please describe the scope of their work.

We partnered with Straight North to help us with SEO and PPC campaigns. As we were developing our websites, we made sure that they were there on the onset in order to work with our development team to make sure they were putting in best practices. We did some keyword research. We applied that research to the SEO side. That allowed us to see which key terms we need to go after.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Straight North with which to work?

We went through a three-month selection process. We did some online research on various companies. At the end of the day for the PPC and SEO side of the business, Straight North was the better fit.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or a personnel work-hour figure?

This size of the project this year will be more than $300,000.

When was the work completed?

We have an ongoing partnership with Straight North. We just went through our second evolution of this project with them. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

One of the biggest issues from our company's standpoint is that we didn't really have a closed loop sales cycle. We implemented a CRM [customer relationship management system] in February, and those were the first leads that came in that will be closed loop. I don't have any stats right now. Our cost per leads has dropped substantially. 

Is there anything unique or special about Straight North that really makes them stand out compared to other business partners?

The Straight North team really cares about this project and our overall success. With other business partners, we are just another client. We have a solid partnership with Straight North.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

The first time around, Straight North developed our websites. That's not really their strong suit. They're more of an SEO and PPC firm. The SEO and PPC is fantastic. Web development is a bit lacking.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We are a technology and business consulting firm in Chicago.

What is your role and responsibilities?

My responsibilities range from inbound marketing to PR [public relations] communications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Strait North?

Our ultimate goal was to bring in new leads. Our old website was built four or five years ago, and it had definitely outlived its usefulness.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

They redesigned our entire site. We worked with them for three to four months rebuilding the site and the content. We launched the site at the end of September of 2014, and then in October we went into the SEO [search engine optimization] portion of their services. Now, their role has shifted to support of the site, but mostly focused on SEO, content writing, back links, and just generally upgrading our level of visibility out on the Web.

I’ve worked with them closely throughout our relationship. We have biweekly meetings, and I constantly receive emails from the account manager with new blogs that they’re written. They also provide reporting every month for us.

What was your process for selecting Strait North with which to work?

We went through several Web vendors, maybe five or six. We were looking at where they were located in relation to our headquarters. We were trying to find more local design firms. We looked at their portfolio, and we interviewed them. We sent them a questionnaire, interviewed them by phone, and then scored them on a matrix.

The reason we selected Strait North is because they brought to us some branding expertise and the SEO piece. They were a finalist with two other Web design firms. Each firm had strengths in different areas, but Strait North really brought a balance of being able to not only redesign our site, but also elevate it as far as SEO is concerned. That’s ultimately why we went with them.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

Based on our review of different vendors, they were in the middle of the pricing range.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

The site launched in September of 2014, and relationship is ongoing for SEO and upgrades.

Are you satisfied with their work?

The project was very successful. We were able to launch a little bit early. They were always willing to find us areas where we could trim down time if we wanted to launch early, and that was very helpful. A lot of guidance in what we needed to do, a lot of back-and-forth collaboration especially around design. As far as SEO is concerned, we’re catching that rhythm now, and we have monthly and biweekly check-ins as far as what’s going on. Collaboration is definitely very high. They’re also very disciplined. So, even if they are working with a team that’s not disciplined or seasoned in these kinds of projects, their discipline is really helpful in guiding the clients. They’re not afraid to keep the client accountable, and that’s a good thing. They’re just great people to work with.

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

I don’t have any stats just yet as far as SEO is concerned, but I can tell you that the numbers are very promising. We’ve heard from our team and some of our clients that the website is fantastic. I’d say the best feedback so far is from our team. Prior to the redesign, our folks didn’t want to share the website.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

They are very adept at branding, every little thing they have is very well-branded. They really embrace their brand, they’re very proud of it, and that shows.  

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

No. I think the project was a success. I think that there could have been a smoother transition between website completion to SEO.