1Digital Agency

Dan is great to work with. The initial work was very good to excellent. We now have a great website, but we experienced many, many problems on the way. We have ceased using 1Digital for PPC and SEO.

Some of the people assigned to the project, especially later on and with early SEO, were quite insulting. There was too much we're too busy to teach you to understand what we are doing. The bright young man I hired to work with them for the PPC and SEO was routinely denigrated, including in front of me. A later project manager was so insulting to me, the hiring client, that work did not move forward because of his attitude. 1Digital thinks that we "disappeared" for months at a time. Other than the first time (due to serious illness), the breaks were caused because the work with them was so time consuming and ineffective that we couldn't afford to devote time to them (our business was growing 3x last year). It would have hurt our company to spin our wheels and waste time. Our current break is because we got tired of receiving work that was completely off our brand strategy - clear communication to us that they weren't bothering to even understand what has driven our business growth.

The website, our first, is worth every penny we paid for it. The rest of the work I wish we had never pursued. In PPC and SEO, the work was off brand strategy and didn't reflect the actual products we sell. There is one severe problem with the website. None of our SKUs in BigCommerce were converted to the new design and formatting. The last 9 months have been a painstaking effort to remake all of our listings. If we try to just copy and paste, the pasted text retains none of the formatting of the design. It is very arduous to create and maintain listings. A few select people were a joy to work with. Others were downright insulting. I had to speak privately with Dan on many occasions to cease the abusive behavior of one particular person. My advice for if you use them for PPC that you require they only use the products you already sell and are your top sellers. Otherwise people click for one thing and arrive at our site with no items that match what they are looking for. My advise for if you use the for SEO is to refuse to look at any work that is not consistent with your branding strategy. Don't get hooked into having to tell them piece by piece that it's off brand strategy. Don't assume that because you gave them your branding strategy that they will then follow it. Create a separate document that takes your key branding elements that both prioritizes them and serves as a checklist. Ask at every meeting how the piece delivers on your branding, and only your branding. Do not waver. I do not believe we will ever go back to 1Digital for anything but site maintenance. There is so much water under the bridge, wasted time, wasted money, and bad client management, that I don't want to ever deal with them again. I have found a new SEO only agency, and the free information they gave was more relevant and impactful than anything I paid for at 1Digital. And this week we are meeting with a new PPC only agency. Our advertising launch funds were all spent with 1Digital, but my hope is that this PPC only agency will work with us where we can start. As far as results, our website has only had one sale generated by 1Digital work. It's like having a Porsche in the garage with no gas in it. I have faith the site will be successful once properly marketed. Dan, thank you for the great site. We'll take it from here.