Our Process
A Clear Process — Without Making You Manage the Project.
You bring knowledge of the business — its goals, its priorities, and the realities of how it operates. Sites & Strategy brings the research, architecture, digital strategy and development process that turns that knowledge into the appropriate solution.
That does not mean you have nothing to do. It means we should not expect you to perform the professional work you hired us to perform. Your involvement is real and it matters at the points where it matters most.
Business first. Technology follows.
The shape of an engagement
One Progression, Explained Plainly.
Every engagement follows the same broad progression. The depth of each stage varies with the project — the sections below explain what these stages actually mean in practice.
- 01UnderstandLearn the business and what the project must accomplish
- 02ResearchStudy the customers, the market, and the current presence
- 03PlanSet the approach, the priorities, and the shape of the work
- 04ScopeAgree plainly on what the project does and does not include
- 05CreateDesign and build the solution the plan calls for
- 06ReviewAssess the work together at deliberate points
- 07TestVerify it holds up across real cases and devices
- 08LaunchTake it live carefully, with nothing left to chance
- 09DevelopRefine and extend it as the business moves forward
This is the same progression behind every project in our work.
Begin with the business
We Start by Understanding What We're Actually Building Around.
Before deciding on pages, technology or features, we need to understand the business itself. A list of requested pages is not a brief — it is a symptom of decisions that have not been made yet.
So the first work is understanding, not specifying. Depending on the engagement, that means getting clear on:
- What the business actually does
- Which services or products matter most
- Who its customers are
- How customers currently find it
- What prompted the project
- Where the current digital presence helps or falls short
- Operational realities that may affect the solution
- What the business needs the project to accomplish
Independent research
Then We Do Our Homework.
Your knowledge of the business is essential and irreplaceable. But you should not be expected to perform our strategic analysis for us. Depending on the engagement, that independent work may include:
- The existing website and digital presence
- Relevant competitors
- Service positioning
- Customer paths
- Information architecture
- The search and local environment, where relevant
- Content and authentic media
- Conversion opportunities
- Technical requirements
- Existing systems and integrations, where relevant
We need your knowledge of your business. We don’t expect you to do our strategy work for us.
Not every project requires every category of research. The point is that the analysis is our responsibility — you are not handed a homework assignment to justify the engagement.
Translate research into a plan
Research Has to Lead to Decisions.
Discovery and research are only useful once they are turned into recommendations. That is where analysis becomes a plan — a set of deliberate decisions about:
- What should be emphasized
- How the business should be organized digitally
- Which pages or functionality are actually necessary
- What content and media are required
- What different visitors need to understand
- What actions visitors should be encouraged to take
- Which integrations or workflows may matter
- What does not need to be built
Strategy is valuable partly because of what it prevents. A good plan rules out unnecessary technology and unnecessary scope as clearly as it commits to what genuinely needs to be built.
Define scope before development
Know What We're Building Before We Start Building It.
Before development begins, the engagement should establish a shared, written understanding of the work. Clarity here is what keeps a project calm later on:
- Agreed objectives
- Deliverables
- Expected client inputs
- Content and media requirements
- Known integrations
- Major functionality
- Review points
- Assumptions and dependencies
- What is outside the current scope
When something legitimately changes.
Sometimes discovery reveals a real requirement that materially changes the agreed engagement. When that happens, it should be discussed openly and scoped — not quietly added, and not ignored because it is inconvenient.
This is about clarity, not paperwork. The aim is simply that both sides always know what is being built and why.
Content & authentic business material
You Know the Business. We Turn That Knowledge Into Digital Communication.
Content is where the division of responsibility becomes concrete. You hold the facts and the expertise; we hold the discipline of turning that into a customer-facing structure.
What you contribute
- Accurate business information
- Factual expertise
- Authentic photos, video and materials, where relevant
- Access to necessary existing assets and systems
- Factual validation
- Decisions at defined checkpoints
What Sites & Strategy contributes
- Content organization
- Messaging architecture
- Content development
- Service hierarchy
- Digital presentation
- Identification of missing information or media
- Translation of business knowledge into customer-facing structure
Our model is not “send us all your finished website copy and we’ll put it online.” That is not the service, and it usually is not what actually represents a business well.
Equally, we cannot invent facts about your business. The accurate raw material comes from you; the organization, messaging and presentation come from us.
The division of labor
What We Need From You — and What We Don’t.
A good working relationship is clear about who does what. Here is the honest version, in both directions.
We need
- Accurate business information
- Access to relevant existing systems and materials when required
- Authentic media where appropriate
- Timely factual review
- Availability of an appropriate decision-maker at defined checkpoints
- Candid feedback when something does not accurately represent the business
We don’t expect you to
- Design the website
- Determine the information architecture
- Write technical specifications
- Choose the technology stack
- Understand technical SEO implementation
- Know how conversion architecture should work
- Manage the development process for us
Your job is to know your business. Our job is to translate that knowledge into the appropriate digital architecture.
Meaningful review points
Review the Decisions That Matter.
You should not have to approve every development detail as it happens. That is not involvement — it is project management we were hired to handle.
Instead, the engagement is built around meaningful review points where your input genuinely changes the outcome:
- Strategic direction
- Business representation
- Major content
- Key functionality
- Visual direction, where appropriate
- Factual accuracy
- Final pre-launch review
Technical implementation decisions that do not materially change the agreed business outcome generally remain our responsibility. That is the point of hiring a development partner.
This structure is designed to keep projects moving. It keeps you appropriately involved without turning the work into an endless loop of approvals.
Quality assurance
Before Launch, We Test What the Customer Actually Experiences.
Confirming that a page loads is the beginning of testing, not the end. What matters is whether the experience works the way a real customer will encounter it. Depending on the engagement, that review covers:
- Desktop and mobile behavior
- Navigation
- Forms
- Links
- Conversion paths
- Accessibility fundamentals
- Content accuracy
- Responsive behavior
- Integrations, where applicable
- Technical behavior
- Realistic customer journeys
Launch & handoff
Launch Should Be a Handoff, Not a Mystery.
Going live is a transition, and it should feel like one. Depending on the engagement, launch and handoff may include:
- Deployment and domain transition
- Final production verification
- Relevant access and ownership information
- Analytics and integration checks
- Agreed documentation
- Operational handoff
- Known post-launch items
Not every item applies to every project. What matters is that you are never left wondering what happened at launch or what you now own.
After launch
What Happens Next Depends on What the Business Needs Next.
Launch does not automatically begin an indefinite retainer. Some businesses need very little immediately afterward, and that is a perfectly good outcome.
Others find that new needs emerge once the site is live and producing real behavior to learn from. When they do, the work is scoped against the need — for example:
- Additional services or content
- Landing pages
- Conversion refinement
- Analytics and measurement work
- Integrations
- Workflow and process improvements
- Local visibility work
- Custom digital functionality
Need determines scope — not a package. You can see the full range of what an engagement can grow into on the capabilities page.
Start With the Business.
Tell us what the business does, what isn’t working, and what you’re trying to accomplish. We’ll start there — with understanding, before anything gets built.