The strategic partnership will allow both companies to continue focusing on their core areas of expertise as the production of large-scale websites increases in complexity.

Ottawa, ON, March 7, 2022 – Craft&Crew, the website production partner to large-scale business-to-business and consumer services companies like SurveyMonkey, TD Canada Trust, Xplornet Communications, REALTOR.ca, Colliers International, Servus Credit Union, and BGIS, and the highly experienced behavioural researchers and design strategists at DFFRNT today announce the forming of a strategic partnership between the companies. Moving forward, Craft&Crew will leverage DFFRNT’s extensive capabilities in user experience research with its growing roster of clients.

“In late 2019, we made the decision to shed about 70% of the services we offered, focusing our offering on full-service website production for large-scale B2B and consumer services companies,” says Craft&Crew partner, Dave Hale. “On the heels of this focused strategy, our company experienced 75% revenue growth while navigating the business complexities presented by the pandemic. Partnering with the experienced team at DFFRNT brings decades of deep behavioural research capacity to our clients, which allows us to further focus on our core services in content strategy, web design, and web development.” 

The principals at DFFRNT have provided strategic design services to innovative companies around the world including private-sector companies such as TD Bank, Nokia, Cisco, Credit Suisse, and many Canadian federal government departments and agencies.

The growth of e-commerce over the course of the pandemic has been well documented, with companies like Shopify on-boarding new merchants to its platform in record numbers and Amazon experiencing an increase in profits of 220%. While some business-to-business and consumer services companies did not face the same need to quickly pivot to selling products on e-commerce websites, many used the pandemic pause to invest in their digital infrastructure, placing more and more emphasis on improving the information gathering and buying journeys of their customers online.

The companies that engage Craft&Crew for its website production services are often global in scale, operating in multiple languages, and sell a variety of products and services to diverse groups of buyers. Producing websites that support these complex needs requires considerable research efforts such as documenting customer personas and creating detailed journey maps for each of them, areas where DFFRNT has significant expertise.

“Sophisticated users have raised the bar for application, service and website experiences.  Enterprise websites often balloon to hundreds and thousands of pages, many of which are rarely seen or updated. Cutting through this confusion is a research-first activity that puts the focus back on the customer and their needs,” says DFFRNT co-founder Shaun Illingworth. “While research is only a part of our business, there’s no denying it is a vital component of an effective digital strategy. DFFRNT is delighted to bring deep expertise in design research together with Craft&Crew to tackle these enterprise web challenges.”

About Craft&Crew: 

Since 2010, Craft&Crew has produced more than 500 large-scale websites for both business-to-business (B2B) and consumer services organisations in complex industries like financial services, SaaS technology, education, insurance, real estate, and telecommunications. The company’s clients include SurveyMonkey, TD Canada Trust, Xplornet Communications, REALTOR.ca, Athabasca University, Rakuten Kobo, Colliers International, Servus Credit Union, and BGIS.

To learn more, visit www.craftandcrew.ca.

About DFFRNT: 

DFFRNT is a strategic management consultancy that leverages deep understanding of human behaviour, design thinking and service design to solve client problems, optimize customer experience and drive business decisions. The practice is tuned to deliver clear and actionable guidance so clients can achieve big leaps forward. DFFRNT’s principals believe effective solutions are based on deep knowledge of the users, their goals, and the tasks required to succeed. They have delivered services for most of Canada’s largest private sector companies and public sector departments and agencies. Employing a team of experienced research professionals and leveraging a portfolio of best-of-breed techniques, DFFRNT’s research and insights will inform design, be relevant and actionable, and guide solid business decisions.

To learn more, visit www.dffrnt.ca.