Halo Lab

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We're a beauty company offering digital products and online education. I'm the COO and co-founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Halo Lab, and what were your goals?

Goal was to create a new webdesign from scratch with a liberal interpretation of our current brand book in order to arrive at a state of the art wordpress site + modern brand.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Based on their Upwork reviews and dribble profile. I interviewed well over 20 agencies and HaloLabs was the best value for money I could find. their designs are state of the art and the team was very receptive to what was unique for our niche.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Wordpress site with Woocommerce store and blog. Goals was to deliver a new homepage, salespage, blog, store, product pages, about us page, quiz page.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

1 sales person and one project manager but there were designers and developers in the background getting the work done. The translation of our requirements into deliverables worked quite well.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

No measurable results yet as we're still doing CRO audits to the page to improve conversion rate. Overall we come out with a much better site that looks extremely polished. This doesn't necessarily mean higher conversion.

In our case we haven't reached the conversion rates of our previous site yet so I expect there to be a few more changes to the elements until we get there.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Communication started of a bit rocky but they constantly asked for feedback and immediately improved based on our input so can't really complain at all. They delivered on their announced timelines and scheduled frequent calls to check in on everything.

If could have wished for one improvement it would be a shared project management board from the beginning that gives us visibility and an easy way to provide feedback.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their designs are great and come out really beautiful. Most impressive is probably how fast they are at adjusting to feedback. But not just that their ability to take feedback and improve from it instead of being defensive is very impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

• Visibility into the project through a shared project management
• Focus on conversion over beauty

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of an internet software company. We provide media and commerce tools to fashion brands, creators, and media publishers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Halo Lab?

We engaged with them for frontend development for our web applications. We were short-staffed, and we needed a quick turnaround time on this.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Halo Lab builds on top of what we already had, so we’ve provided a lot of documentation.

What is the team composition?

Initially, we had one developer and one project manager. Now, we have two developers and a project manager.

How did you come to work with Halo Lab?

We reached out to them and a couple of other agencies and individuals with good experience and a frontend work portfolio compatible with our technology stack. Halo Lab seemed highly skilled based on their previous work, and their cost was within our budget.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably spent $50,000–$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in August 2021, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t know if there’s anything relevant.

How did Halo Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s been pretty satisfactory. We usually communicate via Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their cost makes them stand out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The developers can improve their experience level. Also, there are some improvement areas in their project management. I think they can perform better or provide a much cleaner process.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Provide the acceptance criteria of every task and as much documentation as you can.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of a social media platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Halo Lab?

We needed their team to rebuild our UI/UX.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Halo Lab has initially launched a brainstorming phase to propose mood boards to our team and examine our platform’s current design. Upon accomplishing this, they’ve fully redesigned our UI/UX by building enterprise-grade solutions. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve mainly worked with their product manager.

How did you come to work with Halo Lab?

We found their team via Dribbble. Halo Lab had an extensive portfolio and knowledge base that motivated us to choose them among their competitors.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $36,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with Halo Lab started in June 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Halo Lab has successfully devised and deployed the exact design features we’ve had in mind. We can’t thank them enough for making our website professional and engaging at the same time.

How did Halo Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate via Slack and conduct regular check-in meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re most impressed with Halo Lab’s ability to scale their team up and down to accommodate our design needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are times when they don’t deliver each solution precisely on the first try, but that’s understandable.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give clear instructions — this is an important step to lead a smooth and successful process.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a lead product manager at an e-commerce software company. We offer a rapid check-out solution for the internet. Shoppers can go to any online retailer that uses our checkout technology and their purchase will be one-click. The best comparison is to Amazon’s “Buy-Now” Button. This purchases the item for you without having to fill out long forms with your name, address, and billing information.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Halo Lab?

We needed to quickly produce a lot of new designs for our web pages. Our web pages had been built early on, and we wanted to do an extensive overhaul regarding design and content. The necessary resources weren’t present internally, so we reached out to Halo Lab.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Halo Lab ended up designing over 20+ pages for our site.

I created a project brief that gave the background of what we wanted to accomplish. Inside the project brief were different smaller design briefs for various sections. We broke the work into 10 different phases, and each phase included the personas we were speaking to with our content, what problems we were trying to solve, and any business constraints on the content.

What is the team composition?

Our initial contact was Anastasia (Sales Manager), who handled contacting and billing. Once we were underway, we worked with a dedicated project manager and a designer.  

How did you come to work with Halo Lab?

Our head of design found them online and liked their portfolio.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $1,200.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October–November 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As we were working through the designs, we realized we had to produce a few new web pages that weren’t originally in the scope. This came about in a short time frame because we were launching a special functionality in our product.

We gave Halo Lab these additional requirements and received the deliverables in less than a week. Without Halo Lab, this would have taken us a lot longer to create.

How did Halo Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

We were always kept in the loop with the latest updates; I always knew what was going on. Halo Labs’ team worked within our preferred design system, which allowed us to collaborate and track progress. Some design agencies don’t want you to see how they do their work, but Halo Lab was perfectly fine giving us more control over the process, ensuring all components were easy to implement down the road.

There were daily check-ins over slack, as well as periodic Zoom meetings. These meetings would take place during the morning for me and the evening for them, as they’re in Ukraine and I’m on the east coast of the United States. In terms of personnel, their project manager would receive our feedback and translate it for the designer.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The flexibility they delivered to our unique situation stood out. Additionally, they were very quick to respond to feedback.

Finally, they leveraged their design experience to create better solution options for us to choose from than what we initially intended.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They weren’t used to working in another company’s design system, so it took time to get them familiarized with ours. Most companies design from scratch, but we have a set of templates and patterns that we use. After a bit of back and forth, Halo Lab performed well in our established environment.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you have very specific objectives in mind and an idea of what problems you want to solve, and what, generally, you want to speak to, then you’re in good shape. If there’s not enough content in the brief, then it’s going to be hard for Halo Lab to design a product that solves your issue. Define what success looks like upfront.

Additionally, if you need a designer to sit with your team and create in real-time, then the time difference might be an issue.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm EVP of KFS Flooring, a commercial flooring franchise based in Silver Spring, MD. Our company is expanding nationally by recruiting franchisees in all metropolitan statistical areas in the USA.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Halo Lab?

The scope for Halo Lab was to create branding guidelines, including extended branding for marketing collateral and signage. Then they designed the franchise website from scratch, including UX/UI, and redesigned the corporate website. Web development included the implementation of a headless CMS system.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We selected Halo Lab based on good reviews, previous work portfolio and reasonable cost.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The stages of the project:

1. Branding Guidelines
2. UX/UI design for the franchise website
3. Webdesign of the website
4. Launching a temporary landing page
5. Development and launching of the full-scale website
6. Redesign and development of the corporate website.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

1 designer and 1 developer, 1 PM.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The delivered results met our expectations, we like the creative branding design and modern-looking website. As with most of the projects, our project slightly exceeded the budget and timeline, but it was not critical and there was some additional scope involved.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was effective, the project team responded promptly and kept us updated on the progress almost daily.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We were impressed by UX/UI design and branding guidelines provided by Halo Lab. The uniqueness of the company is that it offers high-quality work at a reasonable price. The team is very responsive to clients' feedback and incorporates local or industry specifics in their work.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

The company doesn't work with WordPress CMS due to multiple issues with plugins. At the same time for less sophisticated websites WordPress would be a cheaper and faster solution than using a headless CMS solution.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of Kinetik. Kinetik is building the nation's largest healthcare transportation network, our solutions allow our stakeholders to streamline their systems and digitize the transportation network. Our technology is leveraged to provide end-to-end solutions for transport providers to simplify trip scheduling and auto-generate healthcare claims.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Halo Lab?

Creation of the logotype and branding guidelines, creation of the UX/UI design for the website, product interface design of our solutions.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Halo Lab was recommended to us. We reviewed their design portfolio online and gained general interest from their high ratings and positive reviews. After an introductory call, we felt reassured by their vision, talent, and unbeatable offer, we decided to entrust our core projects into their hands.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

• Logo and branding guidelines
• Website design
• Billing portal design
• Claims Adjudication product design
• Trips Scheduler product design
• Marketing materials and pitch decks support

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

One project manager, one or two designers depending on scope and urgency.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Halo Lab team has become an integral part of our team. We trust their feedback based on their significant knowledge in UX/UI. They were readily available to bounce new ideas off of and provide valuable feedback which has led to the successful rollout of features for our product lines.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We are very satisfied with their project management capabilities, which made our product development smooth and efficient. Communication was via e-mail and Zoho, weekly meetings with weekly sprints discussion with regular updates. At any given moment, we know what the team is working on.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The team is well prepared. They don't only focus on the task, but more so on the overall goal. Plenty of research is done before implementing new ideas and they provide a variety of options allowing for you to be completely satisfied with the end result.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No. Our experience with them so far has been very satisfying. The team is always on the same page with us, allowing us to both be successful.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of DAS24 Services GmbH, a private library platform. We offer a social network for people who are collecting expensive books.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Halo Lab?

We had a new idea to create a network for customers in Germany. They're usually older customers who aren’t used to working with IT systems and the internet, so we needed help creating the first version of our product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Halo Lab created a brand book for us where we defined all the necessary topics regarding our company's brand. We started with the logo, the colors, and so on — they did everything from scratch. Based on the brand book, they designed and developed the first version of our website.

With the site, users can buy books, connect with other people who are collecting books, add and edit books, upload photos, promote their libraries, offer new books to sell, and so on. It’s like Facebook but for book collectors.

We’re currently working on the following features, which include an online shop and a book trading service. They make suggestions for new services and features we can add as well. In terms of tools, we’re using Strapi for our CMS system, and they set up the hosting for us with Microsoft.

What is the team composition?

There’s a designer, two developers, and one project manager involved in our project.

How did you come to work with Halo Lab?

We found them on Drupal, where they promoted their designs. We contacted several companies, and we chose Halo Lab.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent over $50,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re proud of their work for us; we have thousands of happy customers with the site. They not only do what we’re telling them but also make suggestions to help us improve our services. 

How did Halo Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

I can always reach them, even if it's Saturday or Sunday. In terms of communication tools, we use Slack and Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I especially like the designs. When the designer suggests something, 9 out of 10 times, we agree on it being what we want.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I’d have them improve. If there’s ever an issue, we can always solve it with the company's management side — the service was so good that we’re extending our partnership with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be sure of what you need.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a news aggregation website that takes articles from over 100 publications. We allow readers to see all the top stories of the day from different sources in one place.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Halo Lab?

I was looking for help with my company's branding and website design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Halo Lab team started by creating my branding for two weeks. Their deliverables included logos, typography, custom icons, and color palette. However, they didn’t develop business cards, presentations, or similar materials. In order to complete the branding project, they looked at my competitors’ strategies. After that, they designed my website for six weeks. I showed them examples of what I wanted, and they created my platform based on those.

What is the team composition?

They assigned a project manager who was responsible for getting in touch with us for two months. We also had a web designer and a branding designer, but we didn’t directly communicate with them.

How did you come to work with Halo Lab?

I posted a job on Dribbble and got over 100 applications from freelancers and companies. I checked the portfolios of each company and made a list of the top five companies I wanted to work with. In the end, I chose Halo Lab because their portfolio stood out against the portfolio of other companies, and they were number one on Dribble. We were initially in touch with their sales manager, and we had 2–3 calls before we started the collaboration.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership ran from August–October 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I was satisfied with Halo Lab's work.

How did Halo Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

I was happy with their communication skills, and the fact that they delivered on time. They delivered the designs in Figma, and we communicated daily on Slack. I had calls with the project manager once a week. We also talked over email before starting the project, and we had calls using Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They had the best design portfolio I had ever seen.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they didn’t have any areas to improve.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Halo Lab is well-organized. In fact, they sent questionnaires to us to better understand what we were looking for.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product owner at FIVE Informatik AG, an IT enterprise company in Switzerland.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Halo Lab?

We needed help with project research and UX/UI.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Halo Lab did project research for us; they defined the user flow, documented it in Figma, and created the UX/UI for the platform. We took care of the development, and we had an application already done, but it was an old-style user interface. The project research covered similar financial applications worldwide to show where to place our application, so they designed some user personas and made a completely new design from ground zero. In our application, we had a wizard for answering data — they entirely made a different kind of data input than we had in our application.

What is the team composition?

In the first project, there was a project manager, an administrative person, and a designer. In the second project, a second designer was helping the other one. We engaged with five people from their team throughout the project.  

How did you come to work with Halo Lab?

We found them on Upwork; we were looking for a company with a certain quality standard that had experience in financial applications.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $24,000 with them on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from March–November 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were delighted with their work and thrilled with the design. Our app hasn’t gone live yet, but the reaction was great from the people we showed it to — our internal people loved their work.

How did Halo Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

There was excellent communication between us. We communicated via phone call, email, and Figma. If there were a misunderstanding, they'd quickly learn what we meant. In terms of deadlines, they took the time we predicted.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They understood our product intention and what we wanted quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Next time we should determine the results more clearly. Sometimes it was a little overdressed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give them as much information as possible and talk with them as soon as possible by phone and discuss open questions.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a postpartum nursing center. Our medical team watches over new mothers and their infants 24/7, and we provide a wide range of activities for their partners. Mothers can fully heal from their deliveries while having fun.

We provide our services primarily for active births, and the mothers usually come from hospitals and clinics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Halo Lab?

Our original website was poorly designed. It didn’t reflect our values and had poor performance. We wanted to change that and get a new website that would really represent us and allow us to interact with our target audience. Also, we didn’t have a booking system, so we wanted one to attract potential customers and solve our reception department’s problems.

We looked for a team that could help us with this project, and we found Halo Lab.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve worked with Halo Lab to develop a new visual identity for the website. They initially didn’t understand what our product was because there aren’t clinics like ours in Ukraine. We explained it in detail and gave Halo Lab examples from our competitors. They did their own research on user flows and categories, and then they came up with ideas. We discussed to see which would fit our business, and Halo Lab designed the site accordingly.

They’ve finished the design, and now they’ve started development.

What is the team composition?

We’ve had meetings with five people so far: the project manager, two visual designers, a developer, and a sales manager.

How did you come to work with Halo Lab?

I found their portfolio on Behance, and we had several meetings and email conversations over two weeks before I decided to choose them.

We had three teams to choose from, and I was hesitating. Halo Lab was great, but they didn’t have the right background. Another team had more beautiful designs, but Halo Lab’s website was easier to use. That was more important than looking beautiful, in my opinion.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost is above $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Halo Lab in July 2021, and it’s ongoing. The website is due to launch at the end of November, and I’ve given Halo Lab a second project, which starts in two weeks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

No one in our industry has done something like the website we’re building, and I think that’s great.  

How did Halo Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

We planned to launch the website in October, but we have many side projects with them, so it has taken longer. Halo Lab is very efficient in terms of scheduling. They use Figma, and we interact through it. It crashes a lot, so it’s inconvenient, but we have to deal with it.

We usually communicate by email and Zoom calls, and we comment on designs through Figma.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I thought that communication would be a problem due to the language barrier and the complexity of our product, but Halo Lab has spent a lot of time understanding our needs. We’ve built a partnership, so we understand each other and have no problems communicating.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I can think of.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Prepare all your material before contacting Halo Lab.