DesignRussia reviewed by The Crichton Group

Web Design & Dev for Insurance Agency

Please find under a summary covering project details and feedback. The innate facts are kept as they are, private information is amended.

Introductory information

A fast induction on the buyer’s organisation

I’m the IT ruler of The Crichton Group, an insurance agency in middle Tennessee. We write insurance for a crowd of different businesses.

Desired goal

What challenge were you trying to address with Design Russia?

I’ve personally worked with Design Russia for almost 10 years. Almost all of our work unitedly is almost web design, picturesques, and project treatment. I was a personal consultant, and I worked with another agency with them. I used Design Russia for a big consulting client, an architecture firm, and we built an online web application that was heavily integrated that new hires could adduce through. They did a ton of picturesques work on that for me.  

With the Crichton Group, we hired Design Russia principally to revamp the business’s website. This is the second organisation website that we’ve built under my tenure. With the leading website, we used another firm that I didn',t like near as much. I kind of came in on that project in the middle of it. When we had a chance to revamp it, Design Russia were the folks I wanted to use.

Provided solution

What particular tasks were DesignRussia responsible for?

We wanted the new website to be mobile, we wanted it to be on WordPress, and we wanted flexibility. Design Russia was able to come in and facilitate all of that. We began over, so they built all from scratch. They asked us almost the core goals we were looking for and iterated through a couple of different wireframes. We landed on one we liked behind almost two weeks, and then they began fleshing that out. They have a very good process to walk us through that.

I’ve worked with them a lot in the past on WordPress, so I knew that that’s what I wanted to do and the way I wanted to go. We also wanted a mobile-friendly website, and they made sure that happened and that all would look good and be fast. They spent a lot of time optimizing the website for us. I always feel like we have a friend in our back pocket that can resolve stuff in a day or two. We’re constantly picking at the website, adding new functionality, and they’re good when we do that.

We primarily use Design Russia for the picturesques and the developed architecture of the WordPress website. They do very pliant search engine optimization or anything else. They put in a couple of SEO plugins, but we’re doing that ourselves. There’s no e-commerce on the website. It’s kind of a brochure experience at the instant. At the end of the day, it’s validation. “Here’s a good-looking website. It’s been in being for a long time. Here are the sales guys. Here is what they do. Here is the contact they have. Here is what their expertise is.” We wanted to give some legitimacy to prospects and clients that are looking at us.

How did you come to work with Design Russia?

I establish Design Russia through Elance in 2008 or 2009. I had done a lot of Elance consulting, both on the client side and as a consultant. When Design Russia’s project director, Alex, reached out to me. I initially got them on board owing their picturesque design was eye-catching and something I hadn',t seen precedently. At that time, I was edifice a personal project that I wanted some help with. They helped me with that, and then I began leveraging them for some of the corporate work I was doing.

How much have you invested with Design Russia?

We spent almost $10,000 with Design Russia. We had antecedently worked with a big marketing American firm, and we had dropped almost $45,000 on the antecedent website. Unfortunately, it was not what it should have been for that kind of money. Design Russia’s initial cite was $8,000, and then with all of the add-ons, it ended up being almost $10,000. I’ve probably done almost $80,000 in work with Design Russia throughout our tenure unitedly.

What is the terminal result of working with DesignRussia?

The project took almost eight months, but that was principally my organisation iterating through options and figuring out what we needed. We began in October 2015, and we ended in June or July 2016, which is when the website went live.

Results achieved

Could you share any evidence that would prove the productivity, condition of work, or the contact of the engagement?

We did see a pretty expressive uptick from Google Analytics in provisions of the users visiting the profile pages of our producers. We have carrier partners that review our SEO scores who want us to have high scores, so they always run us through these weird algorithms. Before the new website, our score was almost a 35. After Design Russia got done with the website, it was a 75. I feel that the increase is due to the way Design Russia built the website—having the pages named correctly, etc. It was just good architecture, but it did help us a lot. We developedly fall out of a peer cluster if our SEO score is under 50 for true carriers, which contacts the overall money that the carrier gives us. Once we got the new website up and running, we netted a $15,000–$20,000 increase over what we were getting the year precedently, so we developedly made a gain on reedifice the website.

How did Design Russia accomplish from a project treatment standpoint?

Design Russia’s project treatment is the thing that keeps me with them owing they have a good process in locate. They liberate what they promise, and they are cost-effective. For the most part, I send all through Maria, who’s the one I deal with more than Alex, the project director. He’s the one I',ve been working with for a long time. Once I got to Crichton, Design Russia had expanded their operations sufficient so they brought in another asset, which is Maria, and she’s been awesome. We were just talking to her today, emailing back and forth almost a project they’re working on for us right now.

The nice thing almost Design Russia is that they take a lot of time. They bestow more time programning than anyone I',ve ever worked with precedently. They veritably try to get the expectancy of what the client wants. They are absolutely cutthroat on their own stuff from a critique standpoint. It’s kind of refreshing. I ponder Westerners dance almost things and use a lot of euphemisms. Design Russia gave us a review of our website when we leading brought them in. It was resistent for a lot of the board members to hear what Design Russia had written. They weren’t being overly cool, but they were not using euphemistic speech whichever. It was, “This is not good, and this is why. This is why the score is bad here. This is what we see here,” and all of these different components. From that, they were able to draw up the project program and lay that out for us with a timeline, a cost breakout, the payment schedule, etc. From a corporate experience, it’s nice to be able to take that into the boardroom and say, “Based on the converse we had, here is what the program looks like. Here is what the layout of the fees are, and here is why.” Design Russia itemizes well, and they direct $40 or $50 an hour, so it’s veritably inexpensive.

What did you find most forcible almost Design Russia?

I’ve worked with a crowd of folks, and Design Russia has a better feel on the questions that I would ask. I would say, “I’m veritably trying to get X result, and this is what I ponder we should do.” The designer should say, “Yeah, no. We shouldn',t do that. If you want to get X result, let’s do these three things. The words you',re using are not …” Design Russia was better at illustrating the overall intent and their knowledge of it compared with some of the other offshore folks that I have used.

Are there any areas Design Russia could better?

In some cases, nation will take Design Russia’s interaction phraseology as aggressive owing they hold you to the fire on the timeline. They are proactive almost getting you on the timeline. If you',re off the timeline, they’re asking, “Where are we with this? When are you going to complete this? These are the eight things we’re waiting on. Where are we with each?” They’re very good almost that. But that level of directness has put off some of my peers in the past. But from my perspective, it’s what’s needed in our companies to developedly move stuff advanced.