Upment

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a company called Kensington Diamonds.

What challenge were you trying to address with Upment?

We hired another company to develop a website and it looked great, but the functionality was lacking. The loading time, in particular, was really slow. We hired Upment to improve the performance.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on our Magento website to improve loading time. When I handed the website to them, it took 7–8 seconds for the page to load. They also resolve any site crashes or security breaches.

What is the team composition?

Yane (Founder) is my main point of contact, and I think he has 2–3 developers working with him.

How did you come to work with Upment?

I found Upment through Upwork. I provided our specifications and then they pitched me. They were experienced working with Magento and could improve our site’s loading time, security, and performance.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $15,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2018 and we still work together.

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

I’m happy with their work. By decreasing the loading speed significantly, they’ve decreased our bounce rate. Before this project, our bounce rate was around 70% and now it’s about 40%. The quality of leads has gone up, resulting in more appointments and sales.

How did Upment perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re straight-talkers. When I talk to them about a project, they outline what we need to do and how much it will cost. If my site crashes or I have a security breach, I send them a Slack message and they’re able to resolve it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very easy to reach and they’re responsive. My website has gone down on weekends, and I’ve never had an issue reaching them. I’ve worked with other developers in the past who took several days to get back to me, so I’m always impressed by Upment’s communication.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I’m very happy with the way they work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be as straight-forward as you can. It helps if you state your problem clearly so they can deliver exactly what you need.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a jewelry design company selling charms, necklaces, bracelets, and more. I’m the head of e-commerce.

What challenge were you trying to address with Upment?

It was originally to improve the performance and speed of our website. Over the course of working with Upment, their role has expanded.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Upment handles system administration: they’ve set up our entire server backend, and they’ve helped develop the frontend of our Magento site.

We initially wanted to get off of a managed server that was creating a lot of problems and have their team build out an environment for us. We also had to migrate from a server version of Magento to a newer version.

As our business and needs grew, Yane (CEO, Upment) became central to our business. He introduced us to Bitbucket and constant workflows and releases. This approach allows more work to happen simultaneously and lets us go back if something didn’t work. He introduced a more professional development process and brought in other Magento developers to solve some problems. We found those resources to deliver more bug-free code faster than other Magento developers we’d engaged. 

They’ve helped us get on New Relic and track any issues and resolve them. We’ve had a significant improvement in our website’s ability to scale. We’re still on Magento 1.0 and have yet to migrate to Magento, but we no longer have outages that we used to have routinely. 

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with Neven (PHP Developer, Upment), Mark (General Manager, Upment), Yane, and another person from their team.

How did you come to work with Upment?

I found Yane on Upwork and engaged him for a particular issue.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $50,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Upment in 2016, and it’s ongoing.

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

Based on the performance of the website and the things we’ve been able to do, our partnership with Upment has been a successful one from mine and my team’s perspective. I wish I could give them a bit more visibility, but the time difference makes it a bit harder to pull them into team calls.

How did Upment perform from a project management standpoint?

I’ve found the team to be very reliable as it’s grown. Yane is very responsive and respectful and works to find a solution for everything. If we hit a dead end, he looked for alternative solutions. He really solves a lot of needs, and, if he can’t solve them, he’ll add to his team to fill the gaps where his specific knowledge may not be as robust. He’s learned a lot working with us, as have I.

I’m the one interfacing with them. If my team comes up with any issues, they’ll go to me, and I’ll work directly with Upment. We use email, instant messaging, Trello, and Skype. We communicate through Qilio with another team I’m working with when I have to pull Upment in. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very good at what they do technically, but what makes them stand out from other teams is their level of reliability. Upment is reliable, trustworthy, and easy to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If I went back in time a couple of years ago, I’d suggest for them to be a bit more organized. However, as we’ve grown, they’ve grown. There’s nothing coming to mind right now. I wish they could be on site, but that’s not possible.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Have a good project manager and keep track of open tickets and communication through whatever channels are in place. There are many ways to talk, be it email, chat, with various team members, or initially, on Upwork. It’s important that there’s also internal project management on the client’s side. It’s just how I work with them successfully.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Rebellious Fashion is an e-commerce business, selling quality and affordable women's clothes. My position within the company was Project Manager, who was bought in to help deliver the many projects had on the go, a lot of which were IT focused solely.

For what projects/services did your company hire Upment?

We hired Upment initially to improve Conversion Rate and manage/overhaul our Systems Architecture and where possible increase speed optimization. They were brought in to identify these issues and resolve the bottlenecks. After seeing how effective and efficient the team proved to be, we began to get them to deliver more and more projects: They helped us understand how to identify future bottlenecks and liaised with UKfast (our host) to set up servers dedicated to Varnish, Magento Backend load and a database backup duplication. We had them work closely with us on an iOS that a third party was developing, which involved ensuring the system was set up correctly and the correct information was based back to Magento. We also had them to implement a new checkout, involving Worldpay and Apple Pay. Prior to Black Friday, they ran Stress Tests. From these they identified areas of further improvement ensuing no site down time (during the peak for ourselves). Integrating new Affiliate tracking system. As part of their dedication and ability to work re-actively, they also resolved critical issues that cropped up, such as issues with other previous developers work, API issues or spam attacks. Here they would advise us on multiple options and tailor the solution to fit our needs. Generally, they came to massively improve our website as a whole, through numerous projects. Their approach and service was pro-active and reactive as required by ourselves.

What were your goals for this project?

The major focus was Conversion Rate (CR) improvement. We understood that there were numerous ways to improve the code, the UX, and that the Systems Architecture currently in place needed to be overhauled. As detailed above, they proved so effective in this we began to have them do multiple development projects, (only a portion of some of the actual development they work they did for us are listed above). They consistently proved excellent ROI and found ways to improve the speed optimization, so we began to bring more projects to themselves and came to rely upon them fully for Systems Architecture BAU (and improvements), as well as afore mentioned other major projects that they we later had them work on.

How did you select this vendor?

The company was hired prior to myself starting, and had been identified by James Wayland (Head of Marketing) through Upwork. This was largely based on their reputation for their Systems Architecture capabilities and speed optimization, two things the company had identified needed improvement. As time progressed, we increased the number of projects we had the Upment team deliver (particularly the more complex ones), as they proved time and time again their capabilities and dedication to service.

Describe the project in detail.

The original scope of the project had been quite large, as discussed previously. It involved a lot of investigative work from the team to identify the bottlenecks we had. Once they had identified the bottlenecks, they worked with ourselves to tailor their developed solution, so it best fit our companies needs and timelines. They took the same effective approach to all projects we later brought to them. We would bring to them ideas, areas for improvement or software we wanted to implement. They would help us scope it out, identify how best to implement it within our current System set up (and any improvements/changes if needed) and then ensure it was delivered in a timely manner. I would receive regular updates and feedback, such as if scope to the project needed to be adjusted, they would react quickly and effectively. Their abilities to advise on strategy, develop and help with any support required post project delivery ensured massive improvements for the company from and IT and UX perspective.

What was the team composition?

Initially the team composition was James Wayland (Head of Marketing) and I dealing with predominately Yane himself, to improve Systems set up. However, as things progressed, and we began to get them to work on different projects, they brought in their own internal specialists, selecting the best suited developer for each project to get us the best result and the achieve the quickest turnaround for each project. This led to us always utilizing the best member of their team for each task. Their own excellent internal team communication allowed them to consistently understand any recent changes to our system set up, removing any worries for us when they brought a new developer from their team to work on our projects.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We saw projects that had hit walls, be delivered by themselves in weeks. We saw constant positive feedback customers from the UX facing projects they delivered. Internally, we found a marked improvement by having a team that fully understood our Systems Architecture and worked constantly to improve it. This also enabled better communication when it came to third party integration and work, reducing time and cost of getting new software deployed. During our time with them, we saw an increase in CR from being average on 1.5% to 1.8% to between 2.0 to 2.5%. Through their stress testing prior to Black Friday, they were able to identify weaker areas of the set up and then fix these prior to this critical period for the business. Their fixes enabled us to comfortably handle a potential 4.5K+ real concurrent users.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

At all times we found the workflow between our own internal team and their effective and efficient. We liaised with Yane and Mark (General Manager) to ensure correct prioritization of workflow. As they knew our set up and company so well, we trusted them to manage the multiple projects we had on the go with themselves, with no need for us to chase or push them for updates on progress. Their communication at all times was impressive and they were always ready to deal with any new issues that cropped.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The most impressive thing about the company was the dedication from the whole team on delivering projects on time and covering the full scope, something which many development teams often promise but rarely deliver. They had a solid grasp on the company goals and aims, enabling them to help advise on strategy and articulate exactly what we needed from a technical stand point (to ourselves and third parties as required). Their support was also truly impressive, as they remained dedicated and if any issues came up they would work swiftly to help resolve them and, in my opinion more importantly, ensure these issues did not happen again.

Are there any areas for improvement?

From my perspective there are no areas I could consider as areas for improvement. In a fast paced industry such as ours, people are always keen to hit deadlines, and scopes and priorities of projects can always can change. The Upment team was consistently delivering what we wanted, hitting deadlines and achieving impressive ROI on their work.