Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the organization.
The studio was founded in 2015 by me. Before that, I worked as a freelance designer for a while and was completely swamped with requests, so I figured out that was a good point to start my own firm.
We are a kind of design agency that stands for quality, and that’s not just words. We are small and senior-only, and we don’t take more projects than we can. And we are growing slowly in order to properly vet our new team members. As a matter of a fact, we are of 20 people now.
Our two branches are web design and product design.
By web design direction we mean corporate websites, landing pages, niche e-commerce websites, and other types of web projects that need neat and original look, accurate and witty copy, and high-end, advanced front-end technologies, like GSAP, WebGL, etc.
By product design direction we mean web- and mobile applications, Saas and e-commerce services, that require straight UX, rooted in user research and proven by usability testing, and accurate, well-structured interfaces with elaborate micro-copy and attention to the emotional journey that lies underneath.
What is the story behind starting this company?
Leading a digital design studio was my dream ever since I got more or less mature as a designer. I always wanted to be able to control the whole complex of work that needs to be done to put stuff online, being responsible only for the design part felt like an incomplete action.
Now, with a team of designers, developers, and project managers, I feel like we are really accomplishing something, we are really responsible for the products we bring to life.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
As mentioned before, I am a bit of a control freak. It is important for me to be able to control the whole process and know who is responsible for each part of it. That’s why we prefer to have an in-house team.
BUT! This does not apply to illustrators and 3d artists. We work with different artists on a per-project basis, and it’s the best option, because artists usually have their own style, and our clients require very different styles.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
I can’t say that we are much different from most of the really good design agencies. We fight for quality, not in words, but in deeds. We meet deadlines. We also have quite reasonable pricing, because our production is in Ukraine.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
Seems like all of our clients have come back to us within two years after the completion of the first project. The longest collaboration went on for 6 years, on and off, and ended only because the company got sold.
We are industry-agnostic because the design and user-research principles are industry-agnostic. And the experience that a designer received in one industry helps when designing for another.
We can successfully apply our knowledge to any specific industry. We have catered for finance and fintech, edtech and learning, apps for children, medical and pharma, gaming and e-sports, architecture and construction, development, and of course, all kinds of startups.
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
Our strength is web design and development, application design, and development.
What is your customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
An important step is collecting the requirements. This is the cornerstone for all the future effort, and without a well-written brief, the scope of work, assets collection, etc. a good project can’t happen.
And this is what we do first of all for all of our projects, big and small. As the result, we have a meticulous timeline for the project.
Then, we just follow the timeline and deliver great work.
This is how we make our customers happy.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
We provide free support within 1 month after launch for most of our projects. Then, depending on a specific type of website or application, we can offer options for support.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
We work on a price per-project basis if a project has a clear and fixed scope, and we work on a per-hour basis if a project is supposed to be flexible.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
Our minimum project is ~$5000 and it unusually is a short landing page.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2020?
It’s 5 - 100,000. 100,000 is for projects that had at least one full-time specialist working on it.
Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?
I think we will become bigger, work with bigger brands, most likely we will work on AR projects a lot.
I am sure I will not leave my position in the studio because this is what I always wanted to do and I don’t want to be just an owner of my studio.
Kindly share your feedback on how Goodfirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
More or less well. I don’t get that many leads, by those who reach out to me are relevant.
