Vide Infra

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a Head of E-Channel Development for one of the largest telecom companies in the Baltic states, Bite.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our website is the main point of contact for prospective clients and serves for promoting and selling both subscription and hardware devices. We needed to improve our website's UX design to increase conversion and brand loyalty. So there were three main areas of improvement: streamlining e-commerce, explaining and selling subscription plans, promoting our brand in general. Additionally, we needed to bring the website to the new brand look and feel.

SOLUTION

How did you select Vide Infra and what were the deciding factors?

We've been working with several top-tier front-end agencies in the region, but there was room for improvement in terms of e-commerce UX design, visual design quality, and front-end development. A friend or a colleague referred Vide Infra to me.

I was surprised by the quality of their work and the number of design awards they won. We met to discuss the scope of works and if they can handle e-commerce UX, which is quite a speciality and not many design agencies possess it. They did have a good experience in e-commerce. Initially, we assigned a small promo website to them and eventually the main website redesign.

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

We communicated Vide Infra our understanding of the bottlenecks on the website and asked to come up with ideas on how to resolve them as well as any other problem they may find.

They created a prototype of the website where they presented ideas on fixing the UX problems in each of the main areas, like the webshop, mega-menu, voice and data plan wizards, etc.

They backed their design ideas by reliable research findings — something we liked a lot as it helped us to arrive at the decisions fast and with confidence. The visual design they produced was elegant, modern, looking fresh and classy. The front-end implementation was on a level.

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

We communicated mostly with Anton, who was in charge of our account, and a project manager who secured technical operability between our teams. The overall team consisted of 2 designers and up to 4 front-end coders to deliver the website faster. They also provided QA services.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The UX performance of our website has tangibly increased — the customers can navigate different subscription plans faster and easier than before, it’s become easier for them to select a companion plan when they buy a device, the check-out process becomes smoother. The total perceived quality of interaction with a shop and the website, in general, became higher.

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

They offer quite a standard yet effective project management approach where we go from business requirements analysis to a UX prototype, then visual/UI design, and then code.

At every stage, they engageed proactively and offered valuable insight on how to do it better. When we communicated our initial requirements and we discussed ways to address them, they shared many interesting insights into e-commerce UX design using reliable research sources, which was very illuminating and convincing.

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

They genuinely care about the results, not blindly implementing arbitrary requirements but carefully studying them and offering something they believe would work better for the users and eventually the business, even if this requires arguing and interacting on the prototypes.

Generally, their UX insight is very deep and it working with them feels like working with a colleague - the involvement and care is of the same intensity. The holistic quality: UX, design and code is very high. We worked with several top agencies from the Baltics and Vide Infra is the best so far.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Some of the tasks could have been done faster yet considering the total quality of the work I'm happy with the results.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The project was done for ABLV bank, which was the largest private bank in the Baltic states with thousands of employees and clients from around the globe. I was the CIO and Member of the Board.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Vide Infra for integrating a new CMS into our existing website initially. The project was successful , and when we needed to develop a new website to reflect a shift in our strategy, we assigned them a complete website re-design.

They also built and maintained our corporate portal. For our main website, we wanted a classy visual design, something that would resonate with our new brand and make us stand out. For the corporate portal, we needed a great UX design and capability to integrate it with our internal systems it painlessly.

SOLUTION

How did you select Vide Infra and what were the deciding factors?

We looked for a company that offered top quality web design and development services, had experience in the financial sector, and was reliable from an organisational perspective.

Vide Infra worked with many banks in our region, had a good reputation for design and technical quality. I called Anton, we met to get acquainted and discuss our goals and exchange ideas on how we can reach them.

I was happy as we shared the same values and vision for how we can work together and do a great job.

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

On the corporate website development project, Vide Infra helped us to come up with the website's information architecture and UX design. They interviewed the key team members to gain insight and assisted us in creating an effective content strategy.

They produced a visual design aligned with our new brand book. Besides the usual CMS requirements, they developed a few sophisticated functional features. One allowed breaking our website's content into several layers with some made accessible for our clients only.

Another allowed generating a combined price list from separate records. On the corporate portal, Vide Infra gathered requirements, researched interoperability with our internal systems and developed a custom portal that streamlined communications with our employees and provided them access to internal resources via a single and convenient interface.

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

I don't know exact figures. I worked directly with Anton and Eugene, who were senior partners in the organisation. There was a project manager assigned to our projects, and the team consisted of designers, developers, QA persons and system administrators.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I can't provide measurable outcomes. The website was rich content-wise, functional for communicating with potential and existing clients and was easy maintained.

I was help in high regard within our market and internationally and was instrumental for the repositioning of our brand. the corporate portal significantly improved communication within the team and made us more close-knit unit.

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

For major questions, we held regular meetings with Anton and for operational tasks, our team communicated with Vide Infra's team via online task manager where we were able to register and track all assignments.

The project management was generally effective. We were in the same page with development team on progress and plans.

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

I liked the team's dedication to making a great website beyond our requirements - they offered many ideas and shared a lot of insight on how to approach the projects, how to make the websites more functional and effective for our goals.

I liked their holistic approach - they were able to provide top-grade design, development and management services as a single solution, working very structurally and methodically, making the project a success altogether.

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

No idea.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm one of the directors of Jayasom. We are a global hotel management company.
 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vide Infra?

We needed help with branding as well as creating a corporate website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They created our website from scratch. They did a lot with our brand identity such as our logo, and a lot with the imaging, storytelling of the brand, philosophy, and so on.

What is the team composition?

Anton (CEO) was our key contact. I think we dealt with 1–2 other people, but he led the project from our side.

How did you come to work with Vide Infra?

We found them through references. We had researched several companies, but they seemed to have the strongest references. Above all, Anton’s proactive attitude was impressive at the beginning.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent roughly over $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I believe we began working with them in 2018, and the building of the website went on for over a year. We are using them for on and off services.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We haven’t opened our first resort yet —it will be opening in a year and a half. They accomplished their task of developing the website based on our standards and they did a good job there. We are really impressed with the way Anton works and the way he leads the company.

How did Vide Infra perform from a project management standpoint?

I was really impressed with their project management. When we began talking about website development, there was the whole framework, wireframes, and design and everything went through sequential steps. It was a very thorough exercise, so I only have positive things to say about them which I don’t for many companies.

What strikes me the most is that Anton is extremely proactive amongst all the professionals that we have appointed. He is the kind of person that responds within five minutes whether it is nighttime or daytime. He was always giving solutions; he was very pragmatic in the way he thinks and very structured.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing was that Anton never said something wasn’t possible. There was always a solution to every problem that we encountered.

I am not an easy critic of companies — I'm usually very harsh. Honestly, with them, I have been really impressed with Anton’s professional leadership. The company as a whole and we only dealt with Anton, he is the brand image of the company. Anton was really holistic and comprehensive in the way he approached the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There's no area to improve at all.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I am overall impressed with what they have delivered. I would encourage anyone to do business with them within their scope of work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a marketing director for Accent Capital, an investment management company headquartered in Moscow with over 100 employees. I’m responsible for developing and executing marketing strategy, hiring and managing providers, overseeing marketing campaign execution and effectiveness across all channels.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Vide Infra?

Our company has over 10 years of experience managing private assets in commercial real estate and currently is undergoing a strategic shift to make the products and services available for a larger audience.

To implement the shift we required a new brand strategy — brand identity, communication strategy, new websites for our companies.

We didn’t have any internal resources to execute this task and looked for a provider. We looked for a company that was capable of developing powerful, original brand communication for financial companies.

We realised that to be heard in the market we needed to stand out with authentic message, something that would be genuinely ours, compelling, relevant for our customers, smart. Especially, we looked for a solid experience in web design — capability to create powerful brand communication along with great usability and functionality.

Besides the brand communication we needed to develop a customer portal, where our clients would be able to acquire, track, and sell their financial instruments, so we looked for these capabilities too.

What were your goals for this project?

The requirements where to research and compile an effective brand strategy, design new visual identity, develop all required content for the websites — text, photos and videos, design outstanding user experience, come up with compelling web design and program cutting-edge websites.

The brand strategy should have been well researched and all proposed ideas, like values, brand core ideas, point of difference ideas, should have been well justified and stand critical examination.

We wanted not a template-based solution, but a truly tailored, based on deep insight into our company and business. The websites should have been state of the art visually, content-rich, and technically impeccable — working on all devices, done with latest technologies and methods.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We researched the high-end companies in our segment to identify website and brand communication ideas that looked interesting and effective to us. One of the prominent companies had an original website that stand our with a great communication, design and technical execution.

It was designed by Vide Infra. We approached the company and asked to prepare an offer for us. The deciding factors were that Vide Infra convinced us they have the capacity to research our team, competitors and our segment generally to gain the required understanding of the business and our strategic advantages, which should have been the basis to develop an effective communication.

Execution-wise, the agency had numerous prestigious design awards, had many good cases we liked, so were sure they are capable of providing the right visual, web design, and technical implementation. The partners in the agency who communicated with is showed us they would take the project extremely seriously and will achieve the results we looked for.

To validate the pricing we approached several prominent design agencies and after that we were sure we selected the right team for the job. The decision was made by the board of the directors.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They started with an executive team interviews, gaining insight into our business. It was a well-planned and executed qualitative research, where they allowed our executives to talk on what seemed important to them about company and business, directing the talk slightly, but eventually coming with quite remarkable conclusions and synthesis of the ideas and opinions they got.

They researched our direct and indirect competitors, evaluating their communication and presented us with ideas on how our brand could be set apart from competition and resonate with our team values and vision.

They produced 60 page brand definition document with all possible information that could be needed for executing further brand activities, from client segmentation, to our values, tome of voice, mission, brand manifesto, etc. That was a profound work indeed.

After that they produced several brand identity options, from a facelift to completely new — all accompanied with comprehensive presentations of how it could look like in a real life, in natural environment.

After we selected one of the options they started working simultaneously on a brand book and a website design. We wanted the website design to feel corporate and solid yet be highly modern, attractive and technologically advanced. They offered exactly that.

To present the design concept they created a video where website use was emulated and design was shown with the dynamics of the actual website. That looked great!

They developed content for most of the website sections, filmed photos and video interviews, and developed a promo video for our funds - our products. They developed the website for a main company and for an asset management company in our group, offering original creative ideas for both.

Currently we are working on a customer portal where they already provided well-researched and functional user experience design and UI design.

What was the team composition?

Our main points of contact were two partners in the agency, one responsible for branding and another for the websites. They handled all the communication and account management, while there were technical project managers for handling the execution.

For filming, which took three days, they came with a crew of five people. Technical communication was done via a web tool where we exacted the task and statues. I believe that their design and development team deployed on our projects was about 10 people.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were really impressed with the quality of the final products — the richness of the content, quality of the visual design and technical quality were above of what we could have envisioned for ourselves. When I open our new website it makes me proud and confident — we have a new and very convincing face, we look and feel top of our game.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

This type of project was new for our team and it was quite large in scope. It took a bit longer for the agency to come up with the deliverables than initially planned but it was reasonable.

For us it also too longer than planned to decide on the provided options and approve the deliverables. The communication was done mainly via email and Redmine web tool the agency uses.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their ability to understand our company, business, commitment to develop original and effective solution are remarkable. The design and development their offer a top-quality but their naturally from their strive to design a custom solution that would work great specifically for us.

They have professional, methodology based approach, great understanding of business and marketing, it’s easy to communicate and set goals and expectations as we speak the same language. We didn’t have to manage quality and challenge them as they themselves offered great work and sometimes proactively improved the things we approved.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I think no.