How it works
You've already made the decision to hand this off. What's left is three decisions, and we bring you each one when it's ready.
Most sites launch four to six weeks after kickoff. The biggest variable is how quickly you reply at each stage.
The five steps
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Tell us about your business.
Eight questions, most of which you can answer off the top of your head. On Growth, Agile and Range there's a kickoff call too, so we hear it in your words.
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Pick a direction.
We send you one page with four different home page designs on it. You pick the one that looks like your business, then answer two short questionnaires: one on your brand, one to drive the build. From Growth up, research into what your customers search for runs at the same time and shapes what comes next.
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We lay out every page.
You see every page the site will have and how each one is put together. The words and photos come later.
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We add the words and photos.
Your copy on Presence, ours from Growth up. You look it over, send your changes in one go, and we launch.
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We keep it working.
Hosting, maintenance, monitoring, and a summary every quarter. From Growth up, we keep watching search and adjusting. On Agile, we keep meeting.
Keep it simple.
The three stages
Each stage settles one question before the next one starts.
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- What you see
- One page you scroll through, with four different home page designs on it. It's there to show you a look, not a finished site: nothing on it is wired up, and none of it is about your business yet.
- What you decide
- Which one looks like your business.
You're picking a direction, not a final design. From there we fit it to your business, your colors, your photos.
What changes by package
- Presence
- Pick a direction and this stage is done.
- Growth
- While you're choosing, we're studying the search results you want to win. By stage two we know which pages you need.
- Agile
- We start with longer discovery about where the business is going, then research where the obvious data doesn't exist. The search strategyThe plan for which searches your site should show up for, and which pages will do it. Growth, Agile and Range only. gets invented here.
- Range
- The same research as Growth, run for every arm of the business.
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- What you see
- A layoutThe shape of a page: what goes where, and in what order. The floor plan before the furniture. for every page the site will have. Image areas are outlined boxes and the text is lorem ipsum, the standard placeholder.
- What you decide
- Whether the site has every page you need.
The placeholder text is on purpose. If we filled it in with real words, you'd read them instead of looking at the page, and they aren't written yet.
What changes by package
- Presence
- The pages you asked for, in the order that makes sense for them.
- Growth
- The page list comes out of the research, so there are usually service or location pages you hadn't thought to ask for.
- Agile
- More research shapes each page, and the site is built so the strategy can be swapped later without breaking what works.
- Range
- One section per arm, structured so the arms don't compete with each other on Google.
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- What you see
- The finished site, with the words and images in place.
- What you decide
- That it's ready to go live.
Your photos, and your copyThe words on your website. Headlines, page text, button labels, all of it. Nothing to do with copying anything. if you're on Presence, are due before this stage starts. After that it's one last look, then we launch.
What changes by package
- Presence
- You send us your words. We edit them and put them in place.
- Growth
- We write your core pages around the research. There's one call first, so we get your tone right.
- Agile
- The same call and the same writing, plus an A/B testTwo versions of a page shown to different visitors, so the numbers decide which one stays. where there's a real question to answer.
- Range
- The same writing, for every arm.
That was the last decision. From here the site is ours to keep running, with hosting, maintenance, and monitoringWe watch the site for outages, broken pages, and errors, so problems get caught before you notice them. on every package.
What changes by package
- Presence
- Hosting, maintenance, monitoring, one change a month, and a plain-English summary every quarter.
- Growth
- All of that, plus search monitoring and updates tied to your search goals.
- Agile
- All of that, plus a strategy meeting every month, ongoing research, and tests.
- Range
- Growth's after-launch work, for every arm.
One round of changes at every stage.
Changes cost the least while the site is still rough, so that's where we put them. If none of the four directions works, we show you more. If a page is laid out wrong, we redo it while it's still empty. The last round is for the finished site, once the words and photos are in.
How often we talk
No standing meetings on Presence. The others get exactly the ones the work needs.
- Presence
- None scheduled. Everything runs on the questionnaires and email.
- Growth
- A kickoff call, and a check-in at each stage.
- Agile
- A kickoff, a check-in every two weeks during the build, and a strategy meeting every month after launch.
- Range
- A kickoff call, and a check-in at each stage.
What we need from you
- Accurate information about your business: what you do, where, for whom, your hours, and anything a customer would ask.
- A pick from the four directions we show you at stage one.
- Your photos and logo, and your copy if you're on Presence, by the start of stage three.
- A reply at each stage. On Growth, Agile and Range, the calls listed above.
What you won't have to do
- Web-building homework (crossed off)
- A blank page to stare at (crossed off)
- Logging into anything (crossed off)
- Switching off the tools you already use (crossed off)
- Decisions about hosting, plugins, or platforms (crossed off)