Project Management, Innovation and A/B testing with Arnaud Boulin.
Interview with the director of MASHVP, an award-winning and innovative web agency created a few years ago in Toulouse.
1.What is the story of Mashvp agency ?
I have a business school training and I worked in Madrid, in 360 ° agency, for 3 years. When I came back to Toulouse I found a project manager job at X-Prime, which has since become Mirum agency (JWT Paris, group WPP). Now it’s part of the biggest agencies in the world. We were 50 in it. I worked for 2 years as a project manager for them, and when I got tired of it, I left.
Then I created a structure called Agence Trois, which operated on the principle of a micro agency, I created teams with freelancers according to the different projects. I met a freelance art director with whom we worked. It went very well and we set up the Mashvp Agency. We remained associated for a few years, then I took the reins of the agency. We are a creative agency with very high requirements in terms of both UX / UI and technical realization. Our thing is to provide innovative tailor-made websites, and we freaking love it !
2. What are you doing in the agency? What is the role of a director?
The role of an agency director it’s a bit like a Swiss army knife. My job it’s to take care of everyone. It goes from the management of the company, to the human ressources part, to the prospecting work and then to the management of the relations with the customers. And then we must also ensure that all deliverables are of good quality. So, I have to make sure that the work we do at the agency is consistent with what the client wants.
“The job of an agency director it’s a bit like a Swiss army knife.”
3. I saw that you were selected on Awwwards.com at least 15 times … Is it due to several people or only one?
It is a team work, with an artistic direction that is accompanied by the whole integration and back office part. The distribution of tasks is done according to the different projects but it is always the fruit of a collaboration between different people working in the agency.
How do you work as a team? Do you use agile methods?
Yes, we are a small agency of 6 people, so we work necessarily in agile methods. But we set up a working method specifically for each projet, with a schedule and a task management. We have a lot of tools to do all that.
4. You mainly do websites? Do you use CMS?
Making websites it’s 80% of our activity and we work 70% of the time with Wordpress. After, we work a little with Drupal, PrestaShop, Magento and others, but not too much. We also make tailored websites from scratch (Ruby on Rails, React, Symfony…).
5. What is your vision of web design?
We try to highlight the content of our thought as artists, but we do not act like artists! It means that we try to do beautiful things, but always taking into account that we are here to make a website that meets very specific objectives. The website must remain functional and the customers who come to see us must also be happy.
We have to combine the UX (user experience), with the interface and especially with the customer’s objectives. We work for people who have business and therefore, we always ask them what their goals are upstream, before doing design, to avoid mistakes from the beginning. The goal is always to take into account all the components of a project before attacking.
“The website must remain functional and the customers who come to see us must also be happy.”
6. What kind of clients do you have?
It goes from the small neighborhood restaurant to big companies like Pierre Fabre, Accor or Galeries Lafayette. We like to do a bit of everything, which allows us to go beyond our confortable zone and challenge us to try things in a new way.
Do you have clients outside the region?
80% of our customers are in the region, the rest in Paris and abroad.
We have a commercial office in Paris, however all the production is done in Toulouse. This office is also called Mashvp.
7. Are you doing A / B testing?
With e-commerce projects, it happens sometimes. We asked VWO who, after asking users to perform tests, processed the data and made us a report, for example by indicating the hot spots of an interface. We were satisfied.
8. How do you see web design in the future?
I see a rapprochement of different trades. Currently, we have a real segmentation between the art director, the front and back-end contributors. I think that we need a real rapprochement of the trades to highlight transversal skills.
To make a good design that works well, it takes a real collaboration between an artistic director, a front-end developper and a back-end developper.
You have to think in a team and see what are the technical possibilities so that everyone can contribute to the project in terms of optimization of small things that will make the difference, especially in terms of animation. If the different collaborators work in their corners, they are things that are difficult to transcribe.
“I see a rapprochement of different trades.”
9. Which website are you most proud of?
It depends because it’s always the last one. In general, it evolves with time.
10. What is the latest app or feature you have discovered?
A software called ClickUp. It is a team project management tool, to set up processes and schedules. It’s like a combination of Slack, Trello and Google Doc in one software.
