Whittington Consulting

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Elder Research is a predictive analytic data science consultancy. I’m the director of marketing.

What challenge were you trying to address with Whittington Consulting?

We wanted to update our corporate website. The company had been in business for, at that time, 20 years, and the website was rather dated and needed a modern look. Also, it was not mobile-responsive, so we needed to address that issue to make it a more manageable, attractive platform.

The other thing is we don't have the staff to do ongoing updates. We needed somebody knowledgeable in web coding. We needed assistance with selecting a platform that would provide an intuitive interface for making ongoing updates and changes to the website for somebody who’s not a web designer. Those were the main challenges: refresh and modernize the look to make it a better overall experience for the user and improve the site’s navigation and maintainability.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Whittington Consulting started off with a kickoff meeting at our Charlottesville, Virginia headquarters. I tried to have the entire leadership team available for that. The meeting was fairly in-depth and went for about two hours. They came prepared with a series of questions that really tried to drill down into the details of our business and to understand what our expectations were for the project, what challenges or problems we had with our current site, and what were some prioritized requests for the new website. They spent a fair amount of time understanding our business and project requirements to the point where, after the meeting, our vice president commented about how impressed he was with their level of knowledge and detail. He expected them to come in and just be web designers and only want to know more about what it should look like rather than trying to understand our business and customer personas and how that would affect the design.

The services that they provided started with the kickoff meeting, and then they drafted a website map so we could get an idea of what the overall page and navigational structure would look like. We went through several iterations to refine the site map before we started to develop content. We initially developed some new page content, while Whittington imported content from our existing website. Some of the new content was based on a series of interviews Whittington conducted with different members of our technical and leadership staff. We asked Whittington Consulting to target specific pages where they would draft the initial content and supply it to us for final editing before it went on the website. The overall web content was a collaborative effort; we did 70% of it, and they drafted 30% of it with final editing by our team.

Then, they helped with the selection of the platform. We ended up choosing HubSpot, which we are very pleased with. Initially, we were considering using WordPress but decided afterward that some of the amenities, analytics, and the ease of use of the HubSpot platform made it a better choice.

How did you come to work with Whittington Consulting?

After I had drafted the RFP [request for proposal] to do this project, I found them through a Google search. I wasn't necessarily restricting it to local firms, but that was a plus. They're based in Richmond, and we are based in Charlottesville. They were one of three or four companies that I ultimately submitted the RFP to ranging from New York to California. Working with a firm that could be onsite, face-to-face, for some of these meetings was more productive than a teleconference.

I liked their overall value based on what they were planning to offer and their pricing for that service. After talking with Rick, the owner, to get a better feel for their proposal and to review their reference websites, I concluded that their offer provided the greatest value and ultimately awarded them the project.

How much have you invested with Whittington Consulting?

There was a one-time development charge of between $20,000 and $50,000. There are no ongoing maintenance or service fees; it was a flat project cost to do the website development and launch.​

​​​​​​What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February of 2016. Our collaboration is ongoing. I’ve had them do several updates or feature enhancements to the website since we launched based on things that have changed or new capabilities that I wanted. They've been very responsive in providing services to do those in a timely fashion.

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

Before the launch of the new website, we had about 90 to 100 website visitors a day. Now, we're ranging anywhere from 300–500 a day. We've had several clients and prospects compliment us on the website; they said it's one of the best they've seen. Any project like that is long and arduous. Coming out of it with a product on the backend that accomplishes what it's meant to be—effective, attractive, and informative to prospective clients—is great feedback and a compliment to Whittington Consulting. I've had a lot of internal feedback that they did a great job, and our own staff and leadership said that the end result exceeded their expectations.

How did Whittington Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

They did a very effective job. They had a web designer and another person who was involved more with the project management side of it, and they kept us on track. The frequency and level of communication from them were great throughout the process and kept me informed about where they were with the process, what were some of the next steps, or what were the needs or expectations from our side. They gave me advance notices so I could line up the appropriate personnel if I had to rely on others for completing the next steps. I was very pleased with the way they managed the overall project.

​​​​​​What did you find most impressive about Whittington Consulting?

I can't really answer that in comparison to others because this is the first time I've been through a project like this, but I can compare it relative to the value from the comparative quotes I got from my very detailed RFP. For the price Whittington Consulting charged, which was the lowest bid that I received, and after comparing feature for feature what I would be getting from others for a higher price, I determined that I was getting pretty much apples to apples across the board. I didn't think going in (but you never know until you're into the fray) that I was sacrificing anything as a result of going with the lowest bid. Their performance, relative to our expectations, exceeded what we thought they could do for that price; it was pretty phenomenal.

Are there any areas Whittington Consulting could improve?

The only hiccup was that they had personnel changes in the middle of the project, which set us back a bit on the schedule. Some of that was outside of their purview; it happens to all companies. The overall schedule that was planned from the beginning was extended quite a bit, but the vast majority of that delay was on our end. It took time to get through the review, editing, and final approval of the page content. The schedule impact from Whittington, relative to the delay that we caused, was fairly insignificant.