Taoti Creative

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

Our bounce rate went down significantly after the launch. I think our bounce rate from our old site was about 75%; it was ridiculous. The bounce rate went down right at the start. We had customers calling just to say the site looks so much better and is much more user-friendly. We have emails from the Contact Us forms on the website from customers who just really appreciated the new site design.

We’re a utility, so we’re not selling anything, and that makes it hard to have real stats. There are no purchases made on the site; it’s more for informational purposes. We don’t have any conversion rates or anything.

How did Taoti Creative perform from a project management standpoint?

Taoti Creative has a very good project management philosophy in place. Teamwork was the tool that they used. We had a dedicated project manager, Lisa Collins, who was the coordinator for the whole project. She worked with the developers. I don’t know exactly how many developers there were, but there was a significant amount of development that went into the project. I would say there were no fewer than four developers working on it at any given time. Taoti handled everything. They matched their best developers with our needs, and Lisa coordinated the workflow for them through Teamwork. It was a very transparent process. Through Teamwork, we were able to see the tasks that she assigned, deadlines, milestones, and conversations between the developers and Lisa. This helped us make sure that we all had the same set of goals and were all looking at the same sheet of music for the whole project.

They were excellent across the board and hit every single deadline. We built in time on our end where we’d need more time to reevaluate things; they were very flexible in their schedule. We never felt rushed, but they kept us moving along as well.

What did you find most impressive about Taoti Creative?

Company-wide, there’s nobody at Taoti Creative that I don’t feel comfortable calling, from the CEO to the project managers. They’re all really responsive and very helpful. They all have the success of our site at heart. I just think they are very good about responding. If anything happens with the site, they have an urgent email that they respond to within minutes.

Are there any areas Taoti Creative could improve?

We had such a positive experience with them. There’s really nothing I could point out for improvement. 

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I don’t have the stats in front of me. We had a somewhat similar website that generated traffic of 10,000 per year. Within the first two weeks, the new site we built with Taoti had more than 20,000 users. We’re now able to track where our users are coming from, and we’re specifically targeting Syrians. Our top ten countries are mainly in the region, as well as top hosting countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. We see that we are reaching the target audience. We now know that the majority of our users access the site via their cell phones, and we have the numbers to prove that. The new site has a much lower bounce rate for mobile users, which is exactly what we expected to see.

The website has only been online for six or seven weeks, so we’re still in the initial phase. We work with partner organizations that are supporting our initiative, and we do a lot of outreach to promote the website. So far, we’ve had very positive responses regarding the structure and design of the site. On the whole site, we only have three images, which is very unusual but goes back to making it user-friendly for our target audience. At the same time, I think it’s a very nice design. No one ever even seems to notice that it’s a website really built for a low bandwidth audience.

How did Taoti Creative perform from a project management standpoint?

We were on an extremely tight, three-month timeline. They really over-delivered on that compressed timeline. We had weekly check-in calls to follow up on the timeline and technical requirements. They introduced us to the Teamwork platform, which was really easy. We were able to communicate as easily as email, but also upload documents and files. They involved everyone on the team who needed to receive certain information or documents. For the post-launch process, we were able to submit tickets through Teamwork for anything we wanted to be changed. We’re still using it for all the communication with Taoti that’s not over the phone. 

What did you find most impressive about Taoti Creative?

It was my first time working with website developers. I think Taoti was very helpful in walking us through the whole process from A–Z. They really tried to ensure that we understood every single step along the way. I feel they delivered on the design and development part, and they really understood our goals. Along the way, they made sure we were always included. We’ve been extremely pleased with Taoti’s work.

Are there any areas Taoti Creative could improve?

I can’t think of anything. We’ve had an extremely positive experience with everyone at Taoti. A lot of the people on our side didn’t know much about website development, and they were available whenever we wanted to talk, either via phone or online. They made sure to explain their work to us.

Could you share any statistics, metrics or other feedback from your work with Taoti?

We are very proud of the responsive design component of the new website. We are a trade association and we represent our members in many different ways and they look to us for insight and analysis. They’re busy people trying to help consumers with their financial needs, while we’re up here taking a careful look at how all of these rules, regulations and laws impact their ability to do that. We’ve been able to tell the story of how our private student loans are performing, how responsibly consumers are meeting their obligations and how our banks are working with them to help them do that.

The bottom line is that it’s just a great site. It is leagues away from our old, perfectly serviceable site but one that had no energy, no passion, and no narrative. Taoti Creative gave all that to us, and we were able to leverage that, use it and we’re going to continue to use it.

We’re working with them now to redesign our weekly newsletter so that it is smarter and more responsive to the end user and takes people back to the website for a deeper look. It has energized everyone here. My colleagues here are thinking differently. They’re thinking web first now and trying to apply things on the site. Although we’re small, we have people who are content owners who need to publish certain pieces on the website. Our Public Relations [PR] shop is prolific. We have a point person whose job is to publish our letters to the Hill and publish our comment letters to the regulatory bodies. After we figure out the new newsletter, I want to continue to integrate all these elements into the website.

What distinguishes Taoti Creative from other providers?

Taoti Creative are natural storytellers. They’re very good at helping us frame a narrative and think through the story line. That’s really what our website has enabled us to do—to become better storytellers.

Is there anything Taoti Creative could have improved or done differently?

One thing that I give them a great deal of credit for is that they have really big brains and really big hearts. But sometimes their Drupal brains go faster than us who don’t speak Drupal. We sometimes have to slow them down, but they’re great about that. The one thing they need to remember is that although they love their customers and think they’re really great people, their customers don’t speak Drupal as fluently as they do—I hope that feedback is well received.