A Letter From CODEMAY‘s President – 2016 In Review

Season’s Greetings!

As the world says goodbye to 2016, I’ve spent some time reflecting on CODEMAY’s first official year in business. Even though we are still a young, small company, we had some very specific goals in mind when we started this fun little venture. I wanted to take a moment to share some of our accomplishments and goals for 2017.

CODEMAY was founded on the belief that small-businesses deserved high-level service without costing a fortune. Too often we saw small-businesses unable to get a fully-custom digital experience because most agencies were out of their financial reach. They were relegated to either using template web-design that never quite met their expectations, or cheap, often low-quality, custom sites built by people trying to make a quick buck.

We immediately started this journey by working with a small, independent film company, Fade In Films. This company previously reached out to a web-developer to build a website to act simply as a portfolio of work. To be as kind as possible, they got exactly what they paid for. The website didn’t work, and I don’t just mean in the design sense; the site actually didn’t function. When we took over the project, we had one simple goal in mind: showcase this brilliant filmmaker’s work. The site, although seemingly simple, accomplishes that goal by ensuring our design and development doesn’t interfere with the work it was highlighting.

After this project, we started to work with our Chief Designer, Isaiah Bowling. I met Isaiah while we both worked in the marketing department of a multi-million dollar international fitness company with ties to a multi-billion dollar sports-entertainment company. I oversaw the digital marketing, and Isaiah was the Senior Graphic Designer. I was immediately impressed with his work when he first presented his portfolio to the entire team. When it was time to start CODEMAY, Isaiah was our first choice as Chief Designer

We then started our next two projects:  Moving Pictures, a Portland based wedding videography company, and Lightbox Filmworks, a Portland based video production company. Again, these were projects we took on because these companies had sites that didn’t make the grade. We let our Chief Designer loose, and he was able to create sites that allowed the brilliant work of these companies do all the talking. CODEMAY Co-Founder and Chief Developer, Jaime May, guaranteed these sites always maintained functionality and our clients never had to worry about them. The results were truly incredible. Upon their release, site traffic and lead generation immediately increased. In a conversation with the clients afterwards, it was commented several times how they couldn’t believe the positive impact the new sites had on their business.

While working on these projects, we took on two new clients: Yoga With Tim, a Laguna Beach based yoga instructor with a large YouTube following, and Beach Riot, a Newport Beach based women’s swimwear company. Both were looking for web-design and development to ensure a solid foundation for their digital strategies. With Yoga With Tim, we were able to help Tim start the process of creating paid content that he could deliver to his audience. The site was clean, simple, and functioned exactly as the client wanted it to.  For Beach Riot, we updated the design and developed enough foundation whilst maintaining flexibility for changes in years to come.  Both projects turned out amazing, and we are very proud of the end-products.

In July, CODEMAY took on the role of managing the digital marketing for one of the fastest growing franchise companies in the United States, Club Pilates. Working with their marketing department, we oversaw more than 100 separate digital campaigns, and were able to increase the overall digital lead generation by 781%, and lowering the cost per lead by 80%.  Working with this client only strengthened our excitement for our digital marketing department, and has set the tone for our goals in 2017.

In August, CODEMAY took on it’s first international client, Rika, a high-end boutique fashion brand located in Amsterdam. Our original project with Rika was to fix issues they had with their website. Throughout our project, Rika’s team asked us to evaluate and offer recommendations on how to make their site better.  The website had been built by several developers, and had become one patched solution after another. Our recommendation was to rebuild it from scratch, and make it so they would never need a developer to update or run their site. And while we were at it, it was time to refresh the look and feel of the site, so a redesign was in order.

In September, we started on our largest web-development project thus far. This site includes: a fully integrated e-commerce section with thousands of products in both their flagship brand, and their discount brand, Rika+, a section dedicated to their boutique hotel in Amsterdam, their quarterly magazine, Rika Magazine, as well as secure press-logins for international fashion magazines to download images for their publication. We are completing the final touches on this site, and are extremely excited for a full release in the upcoming weeks.

Here’s a sneak peak at the homepage:

In our first product presentation to the Rika team, the response was:

“You guys did exactly what we wanted.  So many other developers didn’t listen to what we asked for.  But you did, and gave us something even better than we thought we could have. Why couldn’t we have met you five years ago?”

And our year doesn’t even end there. While working on Rika, we completed two other web-development projects: A personal portfolio site for Jean-Paul Bevilacqua, a Canadian lawyer and prominent figure in supporting LGBT rights in Canada, as well as Feelin’ Saucy, a Portland based gluten-free & paleo friendly sauce maker. Both clients were a pleasure to work with, and we were very honored to be chosen to help with these sites.

And to wrap it all up, we’ve designed album covers for a Nashville country musician, built web-based programs for medical offices in California, run digital marketing campaigns for several other fitness companies across the US and even gave our own website the CODEMAY touch.

It was an exciting first year for us here at CODEMAY. We definitely laid the groundwork for 2017 to be amazing. We have some great products we’re working on for our Digital Marketing side of the business, as well as plans to increase what we were able to do in 2016 ten fold.

I want to thank all of our clients we’ve worked with this year. We’re honored that you chose us to help showcase your businesses. I’ve said it time and time again, you make our jobs easy by having such great products and services. I want to thank our friends and families, who have supported us in this crazy venture; your help has been so valuable. To our Chief Designer, Isaiah: Your visions set the tone for who CODEMAY is, and I am very grateful to have you on my team. To my business partner and Chief Developer, Jaime: Your work is what makes us stand apart from the rest of the pack. I am not only honored to call you my partner, but also one of my best friends.  And finally, I want to especially thank what I’ve decided to call “The CODEMAY Wives”: Sara and Elise. You two have been so amazing in this journey, we really couldn’t have done it without you. I promise your investment in us will pay out in so many ways.

Here’s to a great first year, and to an even better 2017.

Cheers!