Why We Have Chosen MR Studio as Our Partner

When I decided to turn my concept of a well-designed interactive website with perfect UX into reality it was obvious I have to find the best web development company. That is the kind of partners I want to work with. I always run a mini-tender. Always! And I want to talk with at least 4 potential suppliers. In general the first criteria are:

• how fast they reaply
• what is the tone of communication (polite, bold, caring, pushy..)
• do they ask for details or do they push their idea
• their references
• their web quality (if their own website is ugly, how can they make a nice website for their customers?)

After this first round I already had a guess that MR Studio from Slovakia could be the one. Their CEO Martin was the first one to call me, was very polite, fast, to the point. Even he seemed to be very busy (calling me from his car) it was good. He promised to send an offer next week. Nevertheless I wanted to bring that good impression to the test and wait for others.

Within time I got other replies, mostly from Prague, Czech republic. Some seemed to be also very promising. Some were even more proactive and scheduled a 1 hour online call with me in order to ask more questions and fully understand what is my goal. It took weeks. It was sort of tedious, required patience but also was quiet instructive while getting feedback to my idea. Eventually I started to eliminate offers that were not suitable. The reasons were following:

• Failed to deliver an offer at promised time (2 weeks later) - that is absolute NO GO for me
• An offer without asking about details + unreasonably expensive. That kind of approach - no effort, try and see what happens. Not professional at all, unfortunately I believe there are clients with very little knowledge about tenders and website development - that get trapped into this. And I doupt there are good results out of this
• Pushing their own and very different ideas about my whole product concept - Even those guys seemed to be trying, were very polite, had very good references. Even their price was really high, I was considering it but then I thought "Wait a minute, these guys are pushing their idea and at the end of a day they did not listen carefully enough. They rather want to bend the assignment the way it suits their approach." It was very marketing oriented and it was not the fit at all.
• Nobody cared about my customer sectioin, everybody wanted just to programm a simple marketing page without complex features

The offer from Martin was by far the best financially, professionally and communication way. At the same time I got accidentally connected with one of the best brand designers in Czech republic, Lukáš Rendl, who later became our partner for projects. The way he approached and even developed my concept was excellent (more about that in another article)

So we've agreed to start with MR Studio while design was managed by Lukas. I was a bit afraid if they will be able to manage thing between themselves. Eventually it went like this:

• Martin immediatelly tuned him self to Lukas's approach and appreciated his professionalism.
• MR Studio started with the more challenging part - Customer Service zone
• Martin was able to solve operational things on his own directly with Lukas, I was always in the loop
• After some weeks the customer zone was ready and the design was, to Lukas's surprise, exactly the same as in Figma :)

The next challenge was coding a "marketing website". Simplier for coding, design wise more challenging. Even here MR Studio did a great job.

Lukas and myself focused on implementing the design exactly the way it should be while Martin from MR Studio advised us about what functional improvements could be done.

We have agreed to use AirTable project management database to manage all tasks, requirements, corrections, upgrades etc. This platform worked excellent for us and we are using it until today.

You can see and enjoy the result of our cooperation by yourself. Just look around :) The CMS behind that we were provided is also promising and well-structured. Overall I appreciate these things about MR Studio and Martin:

• Polite, straightforward communication
• High quality and reasonable prices
• Willingness and ability to work with my other partners
• Flexibility, they suited themselves to ways we liked (airtable project management etc.)
• Full understanding of our vision and goals and contributing to developing our concept

Even we live hundreds of kilometers away, the cooperation works well. In February Martin made a trip to Prague and we managed to meet for a coffee on Saturday. And I believe that we are just starting since there is a long roadmap for furhter development of our project. I fully recommend this team but don't make them too busy so they are still available for me :)

Thanks, Martin!