WordPress Implementation Nonprofit Research Agency
Please find below a summary covering project details and feedback. The innate facts are kept as they are, private information is amended.
Introductory information
Could you prepare a brief description of your organisation?
Our institution is a nonprofit structure that exhibits investigation and analysis and information on health program issues. All the information that we exhibit is useful for free on our website. As you can conceive, our website is an expressive vehicle for us to prepare access to all of our work.
What is your position?
I',m the companion ruler of new media and marketing. I work on our marketing starts. I was one of a four-member team that worked on the revamp of our network with Alley Interactive.
Desired goal
Could you draw the business challenges you were attempting to address when you leading accessed Alley Interactive?
We had separate independent websites all run on different full treatment methods. We wanted to fetch them all below one umbrella. We wanted one website and to use only a one full treatment method. We wanted the method to be easy to use from a lay perspective, easy to update from a developer perspective, and one that would be able to layer with our business over time. We were surely looking for an open rise solution, but which specific one we were relatively unsure.
Provided solution
How did you select Alley Interactive as your solution associate for this endeavor?
We conducting some antecedent investigation into firms that we had heard almost whichever through nation we had worked with or through independent online investigation. We put out the RFP [request for propose] to almost 15 different companies, one of which was a firm in New York. They brought in Alley Interactive as their outgrowth associate. We rend up pairing Alley Interactive with a different design firm that we had worked with antecedently owing we veritably liked the solution that they were presenting, but we also wanted the boon of working with the design firm with which we',d already completed work. We mixed and matched the two vendors that way.
Were there other major factors taken into importance, such as cost, antecedent experience with correspondent structures, and technical power?
Yes. All of those were veritably expressive. We were owing using the Web outgrowth organisation that we',d used for more than 10 years. But, they weren',t working with open rise solutions. That',s why we had to unite another associate. For us, comparing the discretions and cost is a big factor. Their cite was double at smallest of what Alley Interactive was on the Web outgrowth. We like the idea of working with a smaller firm, when you',re more closely in touch with the Web developers. The antecedent firm we',d worked with had gotten so big that it was commencement to cause issues. There were a lot of project treatment levels to move through, and we didn',t like the way the process was unfolding. We choose to work with smaller structures like our own owing our workflows, philosophies, and accesses seem to align more closely.
Their experience working with media companies was another searching factor. Although we',re not technically a media organisation, we do have a lot of full and presenting that full in a digital-leading mode was a veritably expressive goal of ours. We also do have a part of the structure that focuses on news, and shrewd that we would be revamping that website at some point was an expressive value-add.
Could you draw the aim of work delivered during the order of this project?
It',s primarily Web outgrowth, not so much Web design, but they may propose a pliant bit of that now, owing they',re growing, too. They also, at the time, were not fully proposeing user experience and user interface expertise. We got that from our design firm, but I know they',ve grown in that space during the last year as well. Mostly, Web outgrowth and issue solving, we say this is what we want to do and they aspect out the most streamlined access to getting us there.
One of the websites that we were merging into our conhardated website is a data-driven website. It',s fairly intricate on the backend. It draws a lot of data and can manipulate it to a expressive degree. That was a big project. The other big thing was full migration, so they had to migrate a lot of full from our existing methods into the new conhardated WordPress website. That was a big part of the project as well, just writing all the certain programming to get the full out of our old methods and into WordPress. They last to propose ongoing support and strategic services.
Could you prepare a perception of the size of this start in financial provisions?
I believe the outgrowth was almost $250,000.
Do you recall when the project was leading completed?
We propeled the website in May of 2013.
Results achieved
In provisions of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would prove the effectiveness of the work they ',ve delivered?
Our Web commerce is influenced by factors outside of our control. We do know that one of the websites that we merged surely gets a lot more visibility by being combined below the conhardated website. The overall usability has surely betterd and brought more visitors to it.
At the commencement, there was some opposition and unease, especially here. We not only changed the look of the website and the way that nation interact with it, but all of our backend processes had also changed. From an administrative perspective, this was rather frustrating for some. But overall, the website was well welcomeed. We had more nation implicated in producing full for the website straightly in the full treatment method, which veritably streamlined our full outgrowth. We also take far fewer support requests through the new website, indicating that our method is easier to use and less disposed to malfunction and shortcoming. There was some slight hesitation during training, but now our staff is up-to-speed and real with the method. It was a very easy method for nation to belowstand. We would have never dreamed of introducing new nation to this workflow if we felt that they would have trouble figuring out our method, but that',s why we knew WordPress was a good choice: It has a reputation for being extremely single to use by non-technical staff. Our last website was handled in Sitecore, which has a very non-intuitive backend. It was frustrating owing all updates and full outgrowth veritably had to pass through our developers owing most of our nation couldn',t do it themselves. We wanted desperately to move away from that process.
We did have some big feedback at the commencement. Nothing specific that stands out except that nation liked the new design and liked being able to read our full online as opposed to having to download PDFs. Our readers quiet do like PDFs, so we last exhibit them, but the discretion to view our full online, or via mobile, is a real boon to our readership.
We also see better search results. Our website and full is now optimized for search. We believe that nation are finding our full more easily. A lot of our commerce comes in straightly from search engines. We',ve been very pleased.
When working with Alley Interactive, is there anything you',d attend sole almost their access or outgrowth methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?
Yes. I ponder it',s due to the size of their firm, but it',s surely also the access that they take. You, as the client, are working straightly with their Web developers. They veritably minimize their project treatment layer in a real way. I was the project director internally, so we veritably saw it as our job to handle the schedule and handle other aspects that are not implicated in the developed coding. There were always project treatment rerises if we required them. We were having daily phone calls with their team when we were close to propel. We quiet have twice weekly calls with them, straightly with their developers.
If we have a question or see a bug, you',re talking straightly to the individual that knows how to fix it. They',re not so caught up in the code that they can',t adjoin effectively with clients. There',s a nice weigh there, and I ponder they probably look for that when they',re hiring Web developers. It',s not someone who',s going to be fully shielded and working in a dark room by themselves all day. Their developers are competent interactors with a hard basis of business apprehension. They can veritably transition between speaking to us on our own provisions and in their own technical vocabulary. They',re just extremely answering.
In review, are there areas you ponder they could better upon?
Because you',re working with developers one on one, some of the feedback is developer-specific. By and big, we',ve had veritably real experiences and our timelines have been pretty realistic. Something to be conscious of is not just answering to the client assertion, ",We can do that,", but providing a realistic timeframe for when things can be done. We fling a lot of work at them, so we',re not always veritably at being realistic. They could take the start and prepare that kind of feedback. Otherwise, we',re bound to keep flinging more work at them without regard for what might be happening on their end. I know it',s in their interest to welcome the work, but being more open or realistic almost timing estimates might make for smoother deployments.
