Wakefly, Inc.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CMO for a credit union company that serves the five counties around Philadelphia.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wakefly, Inc.?

We were looking to improve our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Wakefly, Inc. supports our website programming and helps us with security and digital advertising. They don’t do the cost or content; they just monitor performance. Also, they’ve done some things for our website redesign and incorporated more opportunities for engagement.

We meet every two weeks to discuss what we’re looking for. Then, they use that to build an audience for our advertising. Finally, we decide whether we want to adjust it based on their monitoring.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with several people. Right now, we’re working with a paid media strategist, a senior project manager, and a client manager.

How did you come to work with Wakefly, Inc.?

We sent out an RFP to 7–8 companies and selected them out of that process. We were looking for somebody that could handle the CMS that we used because our site was already on it.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably spent $36,000 for paid media and $150,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in July 2019. They’re on a retainer, so it’s an ongoing process.

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

No, we don’t have anything. We’re short-staffed right now, so we can’t think ahead.

How did Wakefly, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a meeting every two weeks through a conference call. Overall, they’ve been great at responding when we have issues and informing us about what’s going on. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They work with a variety of financial institutions and understand the unique challenges we face in this industry.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We need them to be more proactive and suggest what we should be doing or trends they see in the industry. Since our staff is small, we don’t have time to keep up on those issues.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Meet regularly with them, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. In general, push them to come up with the best solution.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of marketing for a statewide oncology practice based in Florida.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wakefly, Inc.?

We were looking to upgrade and redo our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, Wakefly made a full discovery assessment of our current site and looked for recommendations on how we could enhance and evolve its functionality. Then, they developed a new WordPress site from scratch per our request so that it would be easier for us to make changes and update it in the future without the need of developers and designers.

What is the team composition?

We had a main project manager and two different account managers involved in our weekly communications.

How did you come to work with Wakefly, Inc.?

We launched an RFP to which many companies replied. Wakefly ultimately won the project assignment.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together towards the Q4 of 2020, and we launched the site in August 2021. Although we don’t work with them on a daily basis anymore because the project is complete, we’ve kept them on a safety retainer.

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

Since we launched the site, we’ve had 550,000 visitors, and we’ve had over 25% more visitors per month than we had with our previous site. Our page sessions have also gone up, and many people are spending more time per page, averaging a 6–8-minute time on site. Additionally, our bounce rate is now 25% less than before. Overall, those are great metrics; everything is trending upward, reaching our desired results.

How did Wakefly, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Wakefly had a very strong and robust project management process. They always strived to keep us on track with the timeline and helped us troubleshoot any problem. Throughout the project, we had some unique challenges regarding some pieces of data related to the old functionality. However, they were very patient and very good at working with us to navigate through those scenarios.

We used Google Docs and Sheets to manage the project timelines and milestones. Additionally, we had Google Meet meetings weekly, and we exchanged emails throughout the project as needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Wakefly’s creativity was strong, and their creative director and creative team members were impressive; I wish I had had more of those resources throughout the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very clear from start to finish about your requirements, including those involved in launching the site. We would have liked to better understand what the final product launch would be like and what the end of our relationship would be like, but it wasn't their fault.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior web editor of United Women in Faith, a member-driven nonprofit organization, so I run and manage our website.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wakefly, Inc.?

We needed help with website development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Throughout many years, Wakefly has provided web development services and maintenance for our website. When they initially joined, we already had an almost complete website, but they made a lot of changes, including implementing a completely new appearance to the landing page seamlessly. Their involvement has also included creating blackout home pages, making changes to the CMS, implementing pop-up overlays, improving the navigation, and creating a password login process.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Mark (Senior Project Manager), John (Customer Success Manager), and Sarah Smith (Project Manager). Additionally, they’ve brought in web developers as needed.

How did you come to work with Wakefly, Inc.?

My predecessor hired Wakefly, whom she found doing research.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around November 2013, and our engagement is ongoing. We’ve had a good working relationship.

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

Although the website that Wakefly helped us develop and update throughout the years is now gone, we constantly saw a steadily increasing number of visitors. In 2019, we reached over a million views on our home page. Overall, they’ve exceeded our expectations, and we’re 100% satisfied with their work.

How did Wakefly, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Wakefly’s project management is excellent. We communicate via phone calls, emails, and Zoom meetings. They’re very communicative and open, and they always keep us updated and aware of delays.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Wakefly has done more than what we asked for, and they’ve always been extremely responsive. They also offer incredibly fast turnaround times and respond to our requests within hours. Additionally, they deliver great work and give us amazing recommendations. Overall, they’re very pleasurable and personable to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing that Wakefly could do better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Get in touch with Wakefly and talk to them in person. They’re very personable and relationship-oriented.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the corporate communications manager for Fortune Brands Home & Security.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wakefly, Inc.?

We needed someone to design, develop, and host our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Wakefly, Inc. provided us with web hosting, design, and development. We started the project by having a conversation about our scope and requirements before going to the actual design and development processes.

They used WordPress as their main development platform and worked very closely with our team and creative director to mark up the site. They also implemented several technical plugins and set up our Google Analytics dashboard before officially launching.

What is the team composition?

We worked with John (Customer Success Manager), Sandy (Senior Project Manager), Tim (Creative Director & Partner).

How did you come to work with Wakefly, Inc.?

Our relationship with Wakefly, Inc. preceded this project and my time at Fortune Brands, but we decided to stay with them when we were evaluating different options for vendors because we thought they were the best provider for us moving forward.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent approximately $100,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from March–October 2021.

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

While I don’t have any metrics to share, Wakefly, Inc. worked really hard to help us customize our site to tell our story, brand, and culture. There are a lot of custom features that impact our organization on the site, including a career search map that’s both beautiful and highly technical.

They’ve expanded our ability to show the world who we are and made it easier for people to find us.

How did Wakefly, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Sandy worked incredibly well to keep us and the Wakefly, Inc. team on schedule. We were on a very tight timeline and if it wasn’t for her attention to detail and professionalism, this project wouldn’t have gone smoothly as it did.

We primarily communicated through Zoom, email, and Google Chat.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We liked that they worked so well as a cohesive team because I never had to worry about the progress of the project. They kept us updated and worked through every issue throughout the partnership.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It took some time to align our scope with their technical department, and there were issues earlier in the process that could’ve been handled better but other than that, they did a phenomenal job overall.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

For any web development project, I would advise planning in advance and being more prepared so you can go the distance sooner.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a company that makes video safety and telematics solutions for commercial fleets. It’s a dash cam for commercial vehicles that plugs into the engine control module and ultimately records video to help coach and train drivers to be safer. I’m a digital marketing manager.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wakefly, Inc.?

We've always kept a development partner because we don’t have those skills in-house, so we keep Wakefly, Inc. on retainer. They’re responsible for all the backend and frontend code on our website, which allows me as a website admin to do other CMS-level tasks on my own. They're key to solving our business challenge of increasing the number of marketing qualified leads from our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Projects range from something as simple as updating modules on a page, to more complex as redeploying content to our servers. They do a wide range of things to help us convert leads on our site, like improving site speed and improving the usability of the CMS for us. 

In the last year, they helped us relaunch our website. It was a big project and we provided the design and they implemented it.

What is the team composition?

I work with Nick (Project Manager) and Jackie (Customer Success Manager) to strategize and prioritize website projects. At any given time, we have 1–2 dedicated developers on our project and will spread out the work to a third developer if needed.

How did you come to work with Wakefly, Inc.?

We were working with another development agency that was inconsistent and slow. It was important that we find an agency that is gold-certified in Kentico. We did a little bit of research before coming across Wakefly, Inc.

How much have you invested with them?

We just signed our third retainer renewal for $60,000. We definitely added some in our gap retainers, so we’ve probably spent about $260,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2017 and we continue to work with them.

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

They helped relaunch a site that would attract more MQLs and make it easier for them to convert. Year over year, we had a 55% increase in web form completion. Ultimately, that means 55% more leads in our pipeline, so that’s big news.

Anecdotally, we don’t send a lot of things back to them to be redone. Once they develop something, we don’t usually see a lot of problems with it. With other partners in the past, we’ve had to go through multiple rounds of edits. A large part of it has to do with the expertise on their team. They’re very accommodating, so we throw a lot of things at them. They always handle it very well.

How did Wakefly, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Redmine is the project management tool that they use. I can submit any development tickets and they’re good about catching everything. They touch a bit of everything every day. The communication is frequent and effective. They have a project manager and an account rep, and it’s easy for me to communicate with both of them so everyone is on the same page. We are clearly represented by a really good team from Wakefly, Inc. We have weekly calls, they’re super organized,  and we go through everything that’s outstanding in their project management system. They accept any new project requests then as well, so those calls are very productive. Our project manager is always willing to make suggestions that will make the project easier. They always have productivity and efficiency in mind.

We also worked with a third-party creative agency for our redesign, and Wakefly, Inc. handled that in stride

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their expertise with Kentico. They’re always in the know about necessary updates and are on top of anything related to our CMS.

I’ve also worked with other companies where the project manager hasn’t understood all of the technology behind a website. However, our account managers at Wakefly, Inc. have both been very knowledgeable and acted as a great first-resource when we have questions. Sometimes we don’t need to work with a developer directly because our account manager can walk me through the process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

That’s a hard question because I don’t have a lot of negative feedback. There was a brief period when they weren’t developing as quickly as we liked because of their developer bandwidth. I had to proactively go to them to figure out these timing issues. So, I guess you could say they could be more proactive when it comes to communicating negative things.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Set ground rules early about how you want to communicate and how often.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Bay State Savings Bank is the only mutual savings bank headquarted in Worcester, where we've been since 1895. We take great pride in being the communities bank of choice, and are constantly improving the services we offer to further satisfy our customers. My current job title is Marketing and Human Resources Assistant.

For what projects/services did your company hire Wakefly, Inc.?

We hired Wakefly to help us redesign our website. It was outdated and needed a complete refresh and redesign, which is exactly what the entire team at Wakefly helped us achieve.

What were your goals for this project?

Goals for this project were to make the website project a much cleaner look and feel, allowing for customers and potential customers to find what they were looking for with ease. We wanted this new website to not only look better, but also work better. With the help of Wakefly, not only the look and overall organization of our website improved, but the speed of our website drastically improved as well.

How did you select this vendor?

We selected this vendor through a series of interviews. We contacted other web design companies, as well as their references, however Wakefly was the clear winner. They are close to us geographically, which made us feel good to know if something wasn't being explained to our/their satisfaction over the phone, we could schedule an in person meeting with minimal to no inconvenience. The price Wakefly charged was also something we could work into our budget. Their references providing phenomenal feedback about their team, as well as their work. Overall, all signs pointed to Wakefly and we are so happy we choose to work with them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project was a website redesign. We wanted the website to have higher functioning speeds, while also allowing more eye catching photos. We requested a better work flow to allow customers and prospective customers an enhanced browsing experience. We also wanted the website to be extremely user friendly to account for our wide age range customer base.

What was the team composition?

The lead on this project was Mark Sloop, assisted by Jeannine Szymczak, Mirek Cymer and Dean Dorazio. Mid way through the project, Mark needed to take some unexpected time away from work. During this time Jeannine acted as project lead. Even during the transition period, everything stayed on track and exceeded our wildest dreams in regards to not only customer service, but also the content that was developed for us.

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

We don't have the results just yet, but the new website has generated a lot of positive feedback from our customers, employees, board members, directors, and corporators. The new design of the website has definitely played a role in helping us further satisfy our customers.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was spectacular. They never missed a deadline, and made sure to stay on top of us when we needed to give them an answer regarding current or future work. The relationship we formed with the staff at Wakefly seemed to work very well on both sides, and greatly helped the success of this project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

What was most impressive about this company was that they never stopped until we were satisfied. If we thought we wanted/didn't want something in the beginning, but later realized we made the wrong decision, the Wakefly team never told us "to bad." Instead, they worked with us until we were satisfied, every single time, which was extremely valued and appreciated.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None. Outstanding team and services!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of strategic market support for Ottawa University. We are a private, four-year university for liberal arts studies, and we’re headquartered just outside of Ottawa, Kansas. We have additional campuses in Milwaukee, Louisville, Kansas City, and Phoenix. My responsibilities include restructuring and revamping our website as needed.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wakefly, Inc.?

I inherited the webmaster duties about five years ago, and the previous webmaster had made the decision to implement Kentico software because of how comprehensive it was. I brought on Wakefly because I felt that we weren’t getting the full usage out of it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve been using Wakefly for various development projects over the years. I’m hoping to start using them for content marketing, SEO, and other related services if I can get approval from our CMO.

What is the team composition?

Mark (Web Project Manager, Wakefly, Inc.) has been working on our account for the last ten years, and Greg (Web Developer, Wakefly, Inc.) is our leading developer. I’ve spoken with a few other developers about specific features and projects.

How did you come to work with Wakefly, Inc.?

The previous webmaster came across Wakefly while looking for firms that were familiar with Kentico. That set them apart from most of the other providers that we knew of in our area. Finding a team that understood Kentico was our main priority at the time because we had just purchased it.

How much have you invested in them?

We’re currently paying a $4,000 per month retainer fee, and we’ve been doing that for the past three years. Before that, we were spending about $3,000 per month. We started out pricing everything based on one-off projects, but by the second year, we’d set up a payment schedule for maintenance activities, and that turned into a retainer contract during the third year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with them since 2009, and the relationship is ongoing.

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

There was a situation where an agency we hired didn’t pan out, and Mark was able to bail us out. We handed him a set of designs through our maintenance contract, and he completely redid our site without charging us for a separate project. We’ve also seen higher form completion rates year over year. This past year, we jumped from 20% to 25%. 

I think the synergy that comes from our leadership team knowing that the website is designed well—and that we are getting more out of it from a business point of view as far as maximizing the number of inquiries—is exciting. I’m excited about it because we’ve never had a coordinated approach; our digital strategy used to be fragmented among different companies.

How did Wakefly, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

I feel spoiled because Mark gets back to me so quickly. I don’t know that I could work with anyone else at this point. He has set such a high standard and functions like an internal employee.

Mark knows our account so well that he can handle the day to day tasks on his own. He’s been working on the account longer than most of our team members have. He and Greg bring in other programmers on occasion, but they’re my main points of contact.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate the fact that Wakefly brings experience from other industries to the table. I also like how receptive they’ve been to the idea of taking on our digital marketing efforts. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything. They’ve done everything that we’ve asked them to do. I’m sure they’ve been frustrated with us at times because of how our internal struggles have hindered them. I do foresee that changing soon, with us moving towards a point where they'll be doing more work for us, which is what they want.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The key to having a good relationship is to maintain open communication with your point person. Make sure that you’re comfortable with whoever is managing the project because they’re the one that you’ll have to go to when you’re dealing with issues.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Thrive Support & Advocacy empowers children and adults with developmental disabilities to lead rich, active and self-directed lives. We offer services and social, recreational and educational experiences for participants and their families. My position is communications specialist for the organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wakefly, Inc.?

We originally hired Wakefly, Inc. to design and implement our website as part of our rebranding project. Since then, we’ve done several different projects with them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Wakefly, Inc. built our original website in WordPress about two and a half years ago. We’ve worked with them to add new pages, implement SEO, and create a more user-friendly interface for the site’s frontend.

When updating the frontend, we set up a collaboration with Wakefly, Inc.’s technical people and project manager. They gave us ideas on creating a layout that’s both visually attractive and user friendly. For example, Wakefly, Inc. helped us build a carousel photo feature on the front page that allows users to access information about related events with just a click.  

Wakefly, Inc has also shared their expertise in other areas of marketing. In addition to SEO and design for our website, they suggest ways to improve content and post scheduling on social media platforms. Following their suggestions, we have increased our social media reach on all platforms.

What is the team composition?

The primary point of contact for our organization is our Wakefly project manager. We have a weekly call, where I speak with our Wakefly team made up of a project manager, social media/SEO person, programming person, and marketing person. Having that expertise on the phone with us every week ensures that we are all on the same page and are putting forth cohesive content, branding, and messaging.

How did you come to work with Wakefly, Inc.?

Wakefly, Inc. built the website for Thrive Support & Advocacy pro bono before I joined the organization. We learned about Wakefly, Inc. through our local chamber of commerce.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The relationship started before I began my role at Thrive Support & Advocacy—which was April 2017—and is ongoing.

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

When corporate partners and like-minded organizations look at our website, they are amazed at the professional look and feel of our website for such a small organization. As far as the impact on a statistical level, Wakefly runs performance reports on a monthly basis. This allows us to see firsthand that the work we are doing is having an impact. These reports have been an important tool for us to use within the organization and with our Board of Directors. In just the past year our organic users visiting the site increased by 34% because of the work we have been doing.

For me personally, working with Wakefly, Inc. has been very educational. Designing and maintaining a website is new to me, and their team has been patient in teaching me what I need to know. The Wakefly team is also highly supportive of our mission and do a great job conveying that mission through our website.

How did Wakefly, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

The management of our various projects has been seamless. The main reason for that is both, the coordination by our project manager, and our weekly “touch base” calls. Those calls are used to review tasks completed and discuss the coordination and implementation of future goals. To ensure that the website is always current and performing well, we continually look forward three months in setting and initiating new goals.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their consistency, quality of work, and communication are what stand out the most about our relationship with Wakefly, Inc.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. We're in a good place. I have a sound support system; Wakefly, Inc. follows up reliably to make sure I do what I need to do. 

Any advice for potential customers?

When we start a new project, everything’s in writing: requirements, timeline, goals, and more. That way we’re always on the same page in terms of our expectations. We regularly look back on this document throughout the project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Space Coast Credit Union, a financial institution with about $4.5 billion in assets. We have about 425,000 members across the state of Florida, primarily the southeast coast of Florida. I’m the senior vice president of marketing.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wakefly?

We needed them to redesign our website, which serves both members and prospects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They did a complete redesign of our company website, a mobile-responsive site which gets about a million visits a month. The site is a tool for people who are searching for autos, mortgages, checking accounts, and other financial services, as well as a resource for existing members who are looking for self-service assistance. It was basically a start from scratch. We implemented a Spanish translation because we serve a predominantly Hispanic market.

Wakefly did a thorough job of vetting our specifications. We clearly drove what we were looking for in terms of the overall design and feel and usability. Our main requirements were user-friendly and mobile-first contemporary design with a journey involving minimal clicks, along with the Spanish translation and scalable development for Kentico, our CMS platform. We wanted it to be interactive, ADA-compliant, and optimized for search engines. We have some third parties we work with. All of those specifications were provided to them and they came back with recommendations.

We provided the content, but they assisted us ad hoc and created some content we needed. They did all the code development and built it within Kentico for us. We used a lot of out-of-the-box functionality, but they built a custom mortgage estimator for us, which I believe was done in jQuery. For the mortgage estimator, they loaded basically all the details from our pricing engine so it can recommend products with an estimated rate and payment. They introduced several enhancements, such as centralizing all of our disclosures in our footnotes throughout the site and automating how we report rates.

We implemented workflow management because in our we're a heavily regulated industry, so having a separation of responsibilities between who can create approved content and push the content live into the production environment is critical to us. They built a workflow on the backend that would manage that, which was quite efficient. They also helped us quite a bit through consultation. We hosted our own site, but they helped us set up our environments to make sure that we had installed everything properly on our end. They did that at no additional cost.

What is the team composition?

I had a primary project manager, Corey (Lead Project Manager, Wakefly). She did a fabulous job and she was our main point of contact. Steve (Web Developer) attended all of our weekly project calls, but I think he had other people he was coordinating with. Dean (CEO and Co-Founder) was also a point of contact and participated almost as the executive stakeholder. It was those three people that I interfaced with. But I know that there were others involved. There was probably an army of people working on our site that I wasn't exposed to.

How did you come to work with Wakefly?

We went through an extensive RFP process. That process alone probably took six months. But we vigorously vetted several different providers, with the requirement that they all had to be experienced with Kentico. We started out with a list of 10, narrowed it down to six after some preliminary phone calls, and then after a phone interview, narrowed it down to the top three. We did in-person interviews based on their RFP and then chose Wakefly.

Because we’re so regulated, and based on prior experiences, we required US-based developers. We have an environment where people were having to VPN, and we restrict access through a VPN, so everybody on the team was based in the US.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $150,000–200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from January 2018 through July 2019.

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

In the first week since launch, we've seen a 235% increase in our lead generation through the new site. We have seen a 40% increase in conversions, which we measure as a click to apply. Mobile traffic to our site has increased by 30%. Launching a new site, you might expect some of that stuff to actually decrease, so we're quite pleased with the result.

They did a great job of creating clean code, optimizing site speed, and designing the UX. Their quality of work was exceptional.

How did Wakefly perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management was exceptional and the professionalism and friendliness of their team were exceptional. They actually were quite flexible and worked with our tools.

We have a protocol for projects with meeting minutes, meeting agendas, and action items. I believe we used a smart sheet to track our project timeline, which they maintained, but there was 100 percent transparency. All the dates were hit. If anything had to shift or if they had concerns that we were going to be going over the scope of what the project initially was, the conversations were proactive.

There were no surprises along the way. They were prompt with getting the meeting minutes out the very next day with no action items identified. They never missed a call. Every project that we've worked with different vendors on hasn't gone as well. They really made this very effortless on our part. Our website launch was delayed, not because of WakeFly, but on our side. They also gave us an alternative contact who was available during the call when Steve was on vacation. There were always resources available.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I choose my business partners based on their core value set, and Wakefly was a good fit for us because of their professionalism, attention to detail, responsiveness, flexibility, and passion for the work they do. They stood out for their integrity and the pride they take in their workmanship. They really believe in proactive communication and transparency. All of those things are what we stand for and I saw those things in them.

I fully intend to use them for any future website development need and I would highly recommend them to anyone considering a website development project involving Kentico.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No project is perfect, and we had some bumps along the way, but we reached out to each other proactively and had a conversation. There's nothing I would say that they could do better or do differently. I was really happy.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Invest upfront in the decisions and the scope of the project. Put the time in up front so that there's 100% clarity on what it is they're developing and what your expectations are. Keep the channels of communication open and involve your stakeholders on your side early and frequently so that you're not going back and having to make any changes.

Be responsive. Wakefly is very good, but I know from their side that if you're not getting them answers and communicating about decisions or making the approvals in a timely fashion, they’re limited by how much they can serve you. We were very conscientious about being on top of everything.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Lauren Crays: Atlas Van Lines is the second-largest van line in the United States.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wakefly, Inc.?

Laura Rush: We were looking to move our main website onto a different CMS platform. Kentico was the platform of choice for us. We worked with several partners on this project, and Wakefly, Inc. is our current provider.

LC: We also needed a new set of eyes on our web properties. We felt they were getting a bit stale and we needed a fresh perspective.

What was the scope of their involvement?

LC: We have five projects going on right now, but we’ve worked together extensively over the last few years. They’ve helped us with several of our web properties in various capacities. I’m currently working on one of our larger internal sites right now called the Atlas Loop, and they’re also helping us to move that site onto Kentico. We look to them for recommendations on the design aspects of our templates and layouts. We’ve also contracted them to do a variety of other projects.

LR: Wakefly has helped us move onto the Kentico platform across all our sites while ensuring that Atlas’ requirements are met. We have specific ways of doing things, and their team has worked productively within our parameters. They’ve been very accommodating on these projects with respect to making sure they follow the Atlas rules from an IT perspective.

What is the team composition?

LC: Dean (Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Wakefly, Inc.) is our sales account representative, while Brad (Senior Technical Project Manager, Wakefly, Inc.) is our project manager. Our weekly calls are with Brad. When we’ve gone out to their offices to quote additional projects, we typically talk with Dean on the phone.

How did you come to work with Wakefly, Inc.?

LR: We considered several vendors during our search. Someone on our team had previous experience with Wakefly, and after looking into their services, we thought they would be a good fit for these projects. We’ve been pleased with the results.

LC: The last vendor we worked with was an advertising and marketing agency. They do some web work but don’t specialize in it like Wakefly does. The Wakefly team has the bandwidth to take on several different projects simultaneously, which is something that not every vendor we’ve worked with has been able to do.

How much have you invested with them?

LR: We’ve invested about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

LR: We started working together in April 2016, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

LC: We’ve really liked the design work Wakefly has provided thus far, while the switch to Kentico has been an easy transition for us. The team works quickly to get things up and running. The process has been very smooth from the beginning.

The time they’ve taken to learn more about Atlas and the services we provide has been crucial to their ability to make substantive recommendations. Many of the new templates are mobile friendly, which is something our team has struggled with in the past. The new templates make it easier for us to engage our target audience.

How did Wakefly, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

LC: We’ve been very pleased with everything so far, especially as compared to previous vendors we’ve worked with in the past. They turn projects around rapidly and we’re very happy with the workflow. We have weekly status calls with them and there’s always an open line of communication. They consistently check in and send project updates along the way, which is a refreshing shift from what we’re used to with outside agencies.

What did you find most impressive about them?

LR: They support us any time we reach out to them and go the extra mile to educate us. We work so diligently with them on all of the projects and support. If someone is unavailable, we can keep moving with our projects and stay on schedule. They work very hard to help us maintain our timelines. We couldn’t ask for a better vendor to help us through all the projects they’ve worked on.

LC: We’ve gone to them with questions or issues with recommendations from previous vendors that we weren’t sure about, and they’re always happy to provide guidance. They’ll help out with anything, even if it wasn’t a project that they quoted.

Wakefly Inc. has also been really good at making recommendations based on our budget. They’re very transparent in keeping us updated on how various projects are impacting costs.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

LC: Setting project timelines has been very important for our team. It helps us stay on top of everything because we know Wakefly will deliver on time. Outlining those milestones to ensure that we’re meeting our goals, objectives, and deadlines has been central to the success of the project so far.

LR: Potential customers need to identify what they’re looking to accomplish because once they define it, Wakefly Inc. is going to run with it. If a customer doesn’t define their scope well, it will inevitably and unnecessarily draw out the engagement.