CIO Bulletin

Creating digital experiences that matter: Mindgrub

In the past few years mobile app development has become a booming industry. Currently, it is estimated that there are 2.3 million mobile app developers who are devoted to keeping up with the industry demand. mobile app development is a key factor for business success. Mindgrub is an award-winning agency and consultancy that transforms businesses by designing technology for people. The company’s full-service team specializes in enterprise mobile and web development, application support, devOps, digital marketing, branding, user experience design, quality assurance testing, and emerging technologies. Since 2002, Mindgrub has led digital transformations for a diverse group of Fortune 100 corporations, utilities, universities, healthcare organizations, cybersecurity firms, global retailers, and public sector agencies, including Exelon, NASA, Wendy’s, DELL, Under Armour, Yamaha, Crayola, Geico, A&E, The Economist, Polk Audio, University of Maryland, The Smithsonian, and Discovery Communications. A member of the Inc. 5000 for eight years running, Mindgrub has earned accolades from the American Marketing Association, the Webby Awards, the Communicator Awards, Drupal’s BlueDrop Awards, the W3 Awards, the ADDYs, and Inc.’s Top Workplaces program, and has been a member of Clutch.co’s Global Top 1000 list for two consecutive years. Mindgrub’s work has been featured at conferences such as SXSW, Adobe Max, and Mobile World Congress, and has been profiled in The Huffington Post, CNN, and Newsweek. Mindgrub is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland with offices in NYC, Philadelphia, and Washington DC.

Mindgrub developed a sophisticated design system and content strategy for the new website based on Dragos’ new brand positioning and messaging framework. Incorporating the following elements allowed Mindgrub to increase the site’s relevance to all of their key audience segments, which included users in specific industries and professionals with varying levels of maturity within the ICS cybersecurity industry. To enhance the overall design of the WordPress website and improve the team’s editing experience, Mindgrub recommended that Dragos switch from using the Divi theme to Gutenberg. As a native WordPress solution, the Gutenberg block editor is vastly preferable over third-party alternatives, providing a convenient way to reorder and visualize content on web pages. Mindgrub’s team leveraged core Gutenberg blocks (i.e., headings, paragraphs, and quotes) and created blocks to accommodate complex designs and custom fields for more flexible displays and better control over animations and colors. These custom-built blocks allow team members to manage layouts with sliders and scrolling headlines, while the overall Gutenberg editing experience affords efficiency in adding and modifying content and pages. Soon after the site launched, there was a 170% increase in page views, an 82% increase in pages per session, and a 20% increase in session duration. Though these findings are preliminary, they are an indication that site visitors are more engaged with the content. Mindgrub’s SEO efforts and content strategy also contributed to a 14.4% increase in organic search traffic and a 31% increase in new users. The new website has received two Silver w3 Awards for Website Redesign and Best Website User Experience. The Dragos and Mindgrub teams continue to collaborate to reinforce Dragos' reputation as a leader in the ICS industry.

Maximizing customer loyalty by modernizing the customer journey

From a family-owned dairy farm in 1918 to its first store in 1959, Royal Farms now owns and operates more than 200 convenience and gas station locations in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The Mindgrub and Royal Farms teams worked together to optimize each touchpoint in their customer experience, from their mobile loyalty app to their campaign branding to their in-store kiosks and beyond. Royal Farms customers have raved about the company’s friendly service and their world-famous fried chicken for years. Eliminating the friction in the customer experience and strengthening the Royal Farms brand across multiple customer touchpoints had the potential to turn more one-time visitors into repeat customers and more customers into superfans. The Royal Farms project began with multiple discovery session workshops. Based on feedback from a diverse subset of customers and stakeholders, Mindgrub determined that the digital transformation roadmap would include relaunching their native mobile application, streamlining the loyalty program, and strengthening the brand both inside and outside of their hundreds of store locations. Propelled by an agile approach and in-store customer testing, the integrated platform was built in React, a Javascript framework that works as a headless client with a PHP backend, and is supported by custom infrastructure configured on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The loyalty program also integrates seamlessly with the NCR point-of-sale system, mobile payment platforms like Apple Pay, and GPS technology.

Meet the leader behind the success of Mindgrub

Todd Marks, President & CEO is a 40 under 40 and 2x EY Entrepreneur of the Year Nominee, is the teacher-turned-technologist founder of Mindgrub Technologies. Mindgrub, voted CRTC's Tech Company of the Year and placing #520 on the Inc 500/5000, is a mobile, social and web app consultancy, working with companies and organizations in a variety of industries to bring their brand to digital. Marks maintains status as Chief-Everything-Officer for the company. He leads information architects, user experience specialists, creative interface designers, and top-notch developers to solve business and consumer challenges in application development and rapid prototyping. Marks founded Mindgrub in 2002 and has developed enterprise systems for a wide range of clients such as Exelon, Under Armour, Royal Farms, Wendy's, DELL, Adobe, Motorola, The Economist, and Discovery Communications; Federal Agencies such as the FBI, NSA, VOA and the US Navy; and several education organizations such as MSDE, Wrox Press, and O’Reilly Media.