How We Work

Every project we run includes the strategic work needed to launch a successful website. But we make our recommendations based on the information you provide us about your audience, their goals, and the content they need and expect. If you’re undergoing a major content restructure, pivoting your audience targeting, or questioning your assumptions about your audience, we can help.

This one-time add-on service covers the research and documentation needed to make data-informed decisions throughout the rest of the project.

Within our default project scope, we run data reports on how your site and up to five competitors’s sites are performing in the search results (ie. keyword rankings). This information is delivered to you via a spreadsheet, which your team can use to make copywriting decisions later on. 

We can also explore more competitors, for additional scope.

If you want a deep dive into the best keyword strategy for your top-level and product or service pages, we can add that work to this stage. Our senior SEO strategist will produce page-by-page keyword lists complete with insights on details like search volume and difficulty.

If your site already has Google tools, we’ll ask for access so we can review the data to monitor post-launch performance for any changes, and to give advice throughout the project as needed. If you don’t have Google tools (Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager), we’ll set these up for you and give you full admin control. 

We don’t review your analytics data by default, unless you have engaged us for the Website Strategy & Discovery add-on. But if you have a question that we can help answer by reviewing your data, such as whether it’s safe to delete a certain page, we’ll happily check GA4 for you. 

We don’t alter your data in any way, such as deleting events and key events, unless you ask us to. And we don’t retain ownership of your data—we ensure that your team owns everything post-launch.

We do migrate existing Google tool configurations to your new site. We also configure basic conversion points (key events) at launch, if you don’t already have these tracked. If you need additional tags and conversion tracking, we can provide a quote.

Our experts are always around to answer questions about SEO and AI optimizations throughout the project. Our team factors SEO into every project stage, so you can trust that our strategic and creative recommendations include what’s best for search performance—we’ll push back on a request if it’s bad for SEO. 

We do a light review of the provided copy for your main pages, at the end of the content stage, as part of our default project scope. This review doesn’t include subpages or editorial content. If you engage us for a copywriting package, SEO is always included in the writing and editing process. 

We can tailor quotes for other types of on-page SEO work, just ask! We can also provide a quote if you want us to review more pages and offer optimization advice.

The first deliverable in the information architecture stage is a preliminary visual sitemap. This design is like looking down on your site from above, so it’s easier to make sure nothing is missing. This is where our senior strategist maps out the site structure, menus, and page templates needed to achieve your goals.

The pages are based on the list that was agreed upon in the scope of work, and are strategically organized for an ideal user flow and SEO-friendly hierarchy (factoring in audience needs, business goals, and conversion optimization). 

The second deliverable is a full sitemap. This deliverable expands the page templates to include high-level content strategy per page. Once the sitemap is approved, the content strategy work continues in the UX design stage.

Having a clearly defined brand makes a website redesign project significantly easier for everyone involved. Then all strategic and creative decisions can be driven by your brand strategy, and first-round deliverables are likely to already be aligned with your vision. This means fewer rounds of feedback and iteration, so the project can move faster. 

If you don’t have brand documentation, we have three branding service packages led by our senior designers. We’ll provide the strategic and creative direction needed to help you define, document, and effectively deliver your brand.

The sitemap is like looking down on your site from above. The UX prototype is where you get to click and scroll through your site from the inside. This design deliverable is made up of multiple wireframes—every page template that your site will need. 

Our skilled designers use the interactive wireframes to recommend optimal content placement and layouts for the content you have, the content you need, and where your audience expects to find it. We plan additional paths through the site like buttons, callouts, related content blocks, and pre-footer CTAs. 

The wireframes are intentionally colourless, use placeholder ‘lorem ipsum’ text, and show boxes where images and videos will go. This keeps the focus entirely on planning the best structure and functionality, without the distraction of visuals and real content. Those come later.

In the early project stages we gathered insights about your brand. This could be provided brand assets and guidelines combined with a visual discovery meeting, or it could be the outcomes from our add-on website strategy and brand identity services. Now it’s time to expand your branding into the collaborative mood boards that we call style tiles. 

Our designers present two or three options that explore colours, typography, photography, icons, and other visual website elements that evoke your brand’s personality. From there, we gather your input on which aspects of each option you like and don’t like, to hone them into a final visual direction. 

Style tiles aren’t full page layouts and they don’t use your actual content. This keeps the focus entirely on the look and feel of individual page elements and how they work together.

UX wireframes + style tiles = full page mockups! Our designers turn all of the approved pieces into full visual designs (still using placeholder content), so you can see how your new website will look and feel. This lets you view your site in-browser and provide feedback on colours, styles, and all other visual elements. 

We share one mobile mockup, which is the homepage. This is because our sites are built on responsive patterns and components that are designed to work on any screen size—and it’s easier to test mobile performance on the dev site. But we can provide mobile mockups for more pages as needed, for additional scope. 

Once your visual designs are fully approved, we’ll turn them into your new website.

Our designers can change the font or typeface in your existing logo, redesign your logo, or design a new logo from scratch. These are all custom-quoted based on your needs. 

Logo design isn’t included in our brand strategy packages because it’s a complex offering that doesn’t align with a flat rate for all projects. We evaluate your needs and base the scope on our estimated number of hours to achieve them.

We have a business license for Adobe Stock that allows our clients to pick stock photos for your new sites. You find the images you like, and provide links to them in our provided content gathering docs. We download the images and place them where you want them when we populate your site. 

If you need additional help with images, such as choosing and placing images, resizing images, renaming images, or writing image alt text, we can provide a quote.

Following the approved web designs and using our low-code platform (Refoundry), we bring your website to life through custom development. Refoundry expands the WordPress Gutenberg (visual) editor to give our clients almost infinite flexibility, without reliance on a developer. 

Our sites are built by our in-house developer team, and are aligned with SEO, AIO/GEO, and accessibility goals. Through the development process, we create a library of responsive components, ie. every section of every page exists as a ‘block’. Your team can use these to modify existing page layouts and build new pages by simply copy/pasting components.  

While Refoundry is our proprietary platform, it uses open source code like any other WordPress website. This means you don’t have to work with us for ongoing technical support if you don’t want to—but we hope you will. 

At the end of the development step we always share a ‘sneak peek’ of the site, before we start QA. This is to give your team a look at how it’s going, so you can get excited about your upcoming training and QA review.

Many agencies don’t offer content support, but we’ve always included collection and population as core services! 

After the UX designs are approved, we provide a prototype or tool to collect every line of text and piece of media that your new site will need. These are exactly mapped to what’s shown in your approved wireframes. We can use generative AI to pre-populate it with content from your existing website, or you can rewrite everything as you flow it in.

If you engage us for copywriting services, that work will be done in these docs so you can review and collaborate on it. If you don’t, we’ll give the content for your main pages a light review and polish, which may include recommending adjustments for optimization. . 

If content is complete before the new site is built, our developers will populate the new site as they build it. If content isn’t ready when development is triggered, population happens whenever content is ready. The migration process may also include automated exports for certain high-volume types of content from your current site, such as blog posts or events; this would have been discussed during the sales process and at earlier stages.

If you want our team to copy your existing content into the content docs, we can provide a quote for that. We don’t recommend this process for most sites, though. Differences in layouts and structure aside, a redesign is an opportunity to refresh and re-optimize your content. Downloading images from the web can also result in poor quality.

Our copywriting services are straightforward: you can hire us to write part or all of the copy needed for your new site. This way your team isn’t stuck writing all of the content to fill the new site, which is usually the most challenging part of the project. We have copywriting tiers to suit most needs. 

The copywriting add-on always includes brand alignment and on-page SEO (natural placement of keywords). The text is delivered to you in the same content gathering docs that we use for all projects, and includes one or more rounds of revision depending on which tier you choose. These are mapped to your approved UX designs. 

This service doesn’t include writing image alt text, that’s a separate add-on that we can scope for you. It also doesn’t include writing for high-volume content such as blog posts, events, case studies, or resources—but we have content and authority packages that cover blog posts. Just ask!

After we’ve built your new site and filled it with the provided content, our designers, developers, and QA specialists pore over every page and element, checking for design misalignment, bugs, and missing content. At this time your new site is also tested for mobile responsiveness, plus accessibility and performance.  

After two internal rounds of QA, we book you for a training session on how to use your new site. The session included in our default project scope is intended to run you through the backend of your site, and any unique features or functions. It’s not an introduction to WordPress itself. If your team needs more training, we can provide a quote. 

After training it’s your turn to start testing the site and logging tickets. Our amazing client experience team and QA lead are there to guide you through this final stage of your project. We will typically provide short how-to videos to support questions in tickets, and these will be compiled and saved for you at the end of the project.

Once you’ve submitted all of your tickets for the first round, and filled out the launch requirements details that we need, we’ll reach out to discuss a launch date.

SEO and AIO/GEO are baked into every step of our process, but it’s especially critical to the work at launch time. Approximately two weeks before your scheduled launch date, our senior SEO strategist will begin the technical SEO work. 

This includes side-by-side crawls, configuring 301 redirects, performing metadata optimization, configuring an SEO plugin, and migrating and testing all analytics tracking codes and pixels.

It’s finally launch day! We’ll work with you on a launch plan to ensure it goes smoothly. 

This can include working with your IT department or point person, updating URLs, reconfiguring your domain, setting up SSL certificates, and configuring caching and plugins. It also includes launch day SEO tasks like crawling for 404s,  implementing 301 redirects, submitting the XML sitemap to search engines, and testing Google Tools and other pixels.

In the days after your site’s launch, we’re constantly monitoring it through Google Analytics to make sure your conversion points are tracking, and your traffic is steady. 

We provide a two-week support window to wrap up any remaining tickets from QA, and to deliver your documented how-to videos and other helpful resources. But we’re not gone once the two weeks are up! We’re around to answer how-to questions for the lifetime of your website. 

If you need technical support, design support, or have a more in-depth question, we’ll provide a quote for the work. If you have one of our hosting and maintenance packages you get a preferred rate and priority attention in our support portal. But even if you don’t, we’ll still respond right away and get you right into our developers’ queue.

Reputable web hosting and regular maintenance are the best way to ensure that your site stays online, secure, up-to-date, and free of bugs.

You are not required to host your new site through us, or to retain us to maintain your site. We will hand over everything you need to whomever needs it, without a fuss. But we offer Pantheon hosting and three tiers of monthly maintenance packages. These cover as much as you need of routine site care like backups, monitoring, testing, security updates, bug fixes, and more. 

If you’re on one of our maintenance packages, you get a preferred rate on additional quoted work, such as bug fixes (if not included in your package), design updates, and other technical work on your site. You also get priority attention when you submit issues through our support portal.

SEO is not dead. It’s still the most important strategic tactic to help your website increase traffic, visibility, and authority. That includes visibility and citations in AI tools. But SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Our SEO strategy services help our clients play the long game. 

When we launch your new website we submit your XML sitemap to search engines. Search engines crawl the new site that day. What they discover is new and updated content. This triggers them to start recrawling more frequently, to reevaluate what your site is about and how it stacks up against other sites. Each time the bots return, that’s an opportunity to rank higher and expand your topical authority. 

What crawlers find needs to be well-optimized, fast-loading, free from technical issues, and, most importantly, helpful and relevant. We provide monthly reports that focus on how your site is performing, where it needs to improve, keywords worth targeting, updates that support AI citation, topic recommendations for new content, and more. 

Each report is focused on what’s happening right now, and what to do about it.  No contract is required.

One of the most valuable types of website content is original articles written by experts. Search engines and AI tools love them. But most of our clients don’t have the time to get that knowledge out of their experts’ heads and onto their websites, let alone optimize it for SEO and AI.

We have three content marketing retainer packages that range from editorial direction all the way up to full content creation including articles and supporting social media posts.

Your team has the most valuable social network of connections. If you’re not tapping into that to boost your company’s authority, you’re missing out. We have three social media management retainer packages that start with building a powerful LinkedIn presence around one expert, and build to scripting videos and full video content production.

Google keeps making it harder and harder to earn organic search traffic. But one thing is always true: Google Ads show above all of those fancy new search features. That’s why well-targeted Google Ads are a fantastic addition to your ongoing digital strategy. 

We offer two expert-led Google Ads Management packages that deliver the level of support you need, when you need it. You get Google Ads strategy, setup, testing, and ongoing advice—or fully managed ad campaigns. 

No contract is required, but we require a minimum monthly ad spend of $1,000. This is to ensure that we have enough budget to get results.