A senior web strategist on call, for the questions you can’t ask your agency.
You run the website. You don’t build it. That gap shows up in meetings.
You came up through communications, or marketing, or the business side. Now the corporate site reports to you, and so does a program with an agency, an in-house team, and a budget somebody expects you to defend. Every week a decision lands on your desk. Approve the design. Sign off on the scope change. Explain to the CCO why the homepage takes four seconds to load. Say yes or no to a replatforming plan that would eat most of next year.
The people who can answer your questions are the same people who wrote the proposal. Your agency is good. They’re also the vendor. Asking them whether this is the right call is like asking the contractor whether you really need the addition.
So you do what smart people do. You read the deck twice. You ask a friend who “does websites.” You look up the acronym under the table and make the call with less than you’d like. Most of the time it works out. The times it doesn’t are the ones you remember.
Picture the next vendor review.
The agency sends the deck Monday night. You forward it to me with a voice note: “Second round on the navigation. Something’s off and I can’t name it.” Tuesday morning you have my read — what’s solid, what I’d push on, and the three questions that will tell you whether they tested this or just designed it.
A director on your team wants a chatbot on the support pages. You send me the one-pager. You get back what to ask about the content it learns from, what it costs to keep accurate, and the question that usually decides it: who owns it after launch?
Your CCO mentions the site “feels dated” next to a competitor’s. You don’t have to improvise a diagnosis in the hallway. You have a place to bring it, and by the next morning you have language you can stand behind.
And when the proposal for next year’s multi-million-dollar program lands, you walk through it with someone who has no stake in the scope before you walk into the room.
Four steps, every question. The same ones I use on paid engagements.
There are no phases to graduate through. Every member shows up with a different question and a different deadline. But the method underneath doesn’t change.
1 Find out what’s actually happening
Most website decisions go wrong because someone in a meeting made a confident guess and nobody had the evidence to push back. So the first thing I do with your question is figure out what’s true. Sometimes that’s me looking at the page. Sometimes it’s pointing you to the audit or scorecard in the library that gets you the evidence in an afternoon: the conversion self-assessment, the journey-mapping canvas, the voice-of-customer interview guide.
2 Get my read, and the questions to ask
Then you get a specific answer for your situation: what I’d approve, what I’d push back on, and the questions to put to your vendor that separate a tested recommendation from a designed one. Language you can use in the meeting, in your own words.
3 Make the call, then tell me what happened
You decide. If it turns into work, the library has the worksheets and platform-specific notes your team or your vendor can build from. When it ships, send me the result. If it didn’t move the way we expected, send me that too. Half of doing this well is being honest when the first try didn’t land.
4 Step back once a month
Once a month, you get 30 minutes on a call with me to zoom out. What patterns are showing up in your questions? Where’s the next 90 days of focus? What’s the bigger move you can see now that the noise is down? The call doesn’t roll over. It’s where the small answers start adding up to a point of view.
Everything in the membership
Resource library
- 30+ guided resources across 9 categories (video, text, and worksheets): conversion, journey mapping, user research, accessibility, customer experience design, analytics, design systems, testing, and a quick-start sequence.
- Conversion Self-Assessment (scoring tool): score your site against the principles Baymard Institute documented across 150,000+ hours of usability testing, and get a prioritized list of where to start.
- Journey Mapping Sprint Canvas (90-minute team workshop): a canvas you can run with your own team, or hand to your agency, to map the path your customers actually take.
- Voice-of-Customer Interview Guide (scripts and framework): ready-to-use scripts for talking to your customers, plus a Jobs-to-Be-Done worksheet for making sense of what you hear.
Implementation tools
- Form Audit Worksheet: the checklist I use on client engagements. It names the fields, validation patterns, and copy choices that cause abandonment.
- Onboarding Flow Map: a template for documenting the post-signup experience so you can see where new customers go quiet.
- Trust Signal Inventory: a scorecard for what’s missing on the pages where conversions die.
- WCAG Accessibility Audit Worksheet: priority-ranked. One in four U.S. adults lives with a disability, by the CDC’s count. Find out whether your site is leaving them behind.
- Platform-Specific Guidance Library: WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, and custom builds. Implementation notes you can hand to whoever does the work.
Live support
- One 30-minute call per calendar month with me: strategy review, design critique, planning the next 30 days, or whatever you’re stuck on. Subject to availability. Doesn’t roll over, so save it for when it matters.
- Asynchronous access via ClarityFlow (text, voice, or video): send questions in whatever format is easiest. Screen-record the page. Forward the deck. Leave a voice note from the car.
Response model
- One-business-day response window: I timebox responses at the start of each weekday, so most questions sent during the day are answered the next morning.
- You get me, every time: not a chatbot, not a junior coordinator. I’ve done this work on the corporate site of a Fortune 500 media company and on small nonprofit sites, and I’ll tell you which experience applies.
- Implementation check-ins: when you ship a change, send the result. I’ll tell you what’s working and what to look at next.
Charter member bonuses
- Charter rate locked in for as long as you’re a member: when the price goes up after the window closes, yours doesn’t.
- A direct line on what the library needs next: charter members set the queue. If you need a worksheet that doesn’t exist yet, say so, and it goes to the front of what I build next.
What this costs, next to what you already pay for.
You already pay for web expertise. It’s in the agency’s rate card, the in-house team’s payroll, and the consultant you bring in when a program goes sideways. None of them sit on your side of the table, and all of them have a scope to sell. Here’s the menu, including the option most people default to:
$495 a month is under two hours at our project rate. It’s a line item you can approve from discretionary budget the same day you decide you need it.
Who it’s built for
You’re ready for this if:
- You’re a director, VP, SVP, or chief communications officer at an organization with a real web program: an agency or in-house team, more than one property, a budget you’re asked to defend.
- You own the site’s results without owning its build, and you came up outside web work. You want to direct developers well without becoming one.
- You already have people who can do the work. What you need is a way to know whether it’s the right work, before you sign off.
- You want evidence, not opinions. When someone says “I think we should,” you’d rather have a way to find out than a louder argument.
- You can approve a line item under $1,000 a month without convening a committee.
- Also a fit: you run a company of 5 to 50 people, you make the digital decisions yourself, and the site looks fine but isn’t converting.
This isn’t the right fit if:
- You haven’t launched anything yet. This is for directing an experience that already exists. If you’re pre-launch, you’ll get more out of Website Roadmapping.
- You want someone to do the work for you. The helpdesk guides decisions and reviews work; it doesn’t push pixels or write code. (Our project services handle that side.)
- You need 24/7 real-time support. This is asynchronous advice on a one-business-day window, not a help desk with a real-time SLA.
- You’re shopping for logo design, brand identity, or general marketing. Different discipline. I’ll happily refer you elsewhere.
- You want a guarantee that one specific change will lift conversions by X%. Nobody can promise that before seeing your data, and I won’t.
The same work, on real engagements.
A Fortune 500 media company: 21 web properties, one complaint
Twenty-one sites, different teams, different platforms, and customers who couldn’t find what they came for. We did the audit work before anyone approved a redesign, then migrated all 21 on a plan built from what customers were trying to do. The frameworks in the helpdesk library are the same kind we used there. The question a member would have sent me: “Everyone wants a redesign. How do I know if that’s actually the problem?”
A regional therapy practice: two sites, one path to “book an appointment”
A practice with a strong reputation and a website that wasn’t turning it into bookings. Practitioner bio pages turned out to be the linchpin: most prospective clients were choosing a therapist before they ever touched the contact form, and the pages weren’t giving them enough to decide. We rebuilt how those pages presented each practitioner and rebuilt the path from there to scheduling. The member version of this question: “The bio pages on my site aren’t converting. What’s actually broken?”
A bilingual community health nonprofit: a directory, a mission, a deadline
A community health organization launching a bilingual practitioner directory for a population digital tools tend to overlook. Every design decision had to clear three filters: accessibility, language equity, and whether it moved someone to the next step, because every practitioner nobody finds is a missed connection. We helped the team decide what to launch with, what to defer, and what to watch after launch to know whether the directory was doing its job. The member version: “We can’t ship everything by the deadline. What goes in v1?”
The questions you’d ask if we were having coffee.
Who’s on the other end
Who actually answers?
I do. Joe Taylor Jr., managing director of Johns & Taylor. I’ve been building for the web professionally since 1999, I hold a current Nielsen Norman Group UX Master Certification, and one Fortune 500 media company has kept us on its corporate website since 2012. Your questions don’t get routed to a coordinator. They get read by me, the morning after you send them.
I already have an agency. Isn’t this a conflict?
No. I’m not bidding on your program, and I won’t use your questions to pitch you a redesign. If your question turns into work, I’ll tell you what to ask your agency for and how to judge what comes back. If you’d rather we build it, that’s a separate conversation with a separate scope. The membership stays a membership.
What if you’re on vacation?
Four weeks a year I’m out, and I’ll tell you in advance. Questions sent during a vacation week get answered the following Monday. I’ll always confirm receipt and tell you when to expect the full response.
Logistics
How does this work day-to-day?
You log in to a member portal hosted on ClarityFlow. From there you can browse the resource library, send me questions by text, voice, or video, and book your monthly call. There’s no required cadence. Some members will check in a few times a week. Some will go quiet for a month and then send three questions before a board meeting.
When can I start?
The day you sign up. The resource library is available within an hour, and you can send your first question the same day.
How do I book the monthly call?
There’s a booking link inside the member portal. Pick a 30-minute slot that fits your calendar. Subject to availability.
How quickly do you respond?
Within one business day. Send it Tuesday afternoon, expect it Wednesday morning.
Practical
How much of my time does this take?
As much as your questions need. Sending one is a five-minute voice note. Reading my answer is a few minutes more. If you dig into the library, budget an hour or two a week while you’re working a problem. You don’t need to consume the whole thing. You’ll use the parts that match what’s on your desk.
What if I’m in the middle of a redesign already?
That might be the best time to join. I can review the work in flight, flag the decisions that don’t have evidence behind them yet, and help you catch the expensive mistakes before they ship.
Do I need special tools or analytics?
No. If you have analytics, bring them. If you don’t, the library includes a privacy-first analytics setup guide your team can follow in an afternoon.
Value
How is this different from hiring a UX consultant?
A consultant delivers a project: an audit, a redesign, a research study. This is ongoing access. Instead of a 30-page deliverable you read once, you get a specific answer on the decision you’re making this week.
How is this different from a course or a coach?
Courses teach principles. Coaching helps you think. Both have value. Neither will tell you “the trust signals on your donation page are in the wrong place, and here are three fixes for your CMS.” That’s what this does.
How is this different from your project work?
Project work builds things: roadmaps, websites, full transformations. The helpdesk guides decisions about what you already have and what someone else is building for you. Some project clients will want both. Most members won’t need to.
Team and commitment
Can my team use it too?
Each membership belongs to one person: the question history, the thread with me, the monthly call, and the portal login. If you’d like other people from your organization to have their own access, add seats for $399/month each by contacting support after you enroll.
What’s the cancellation policy?
Cancel any time. You keep access to the portal and every answer I’ve sent you through the end of your current billing period.
Is there a payment plan?
The annual rate ($4,950) is paid up front. The monthly rate ($495) is the payment plan. There’s no separate financing.
What happens to my charter rate if I cancel and come back later?
The charter rate locks in for as long as you remain an active member. If you cancel and the public price has gone up by the time you rejoin, you come back at whatever the public price is then.
Where this sits among our services
Three ways to work with us. Start with the membership, add a project when something needs to be built, or put Joe on retainer when the program needs an owner.
Experience
Helpdesk
A senior web strategist on call. Monthly membership.
Website
Roadmapping
Six weeks of discovery. Fixed-scope project.
See Website Roadmapping →Experience Strategy
Leadership
Joe embedded with your leadership team. Monthly retainer.
See Experience Strategy Leadership →Charter membership pricing
For the first 20 members or through December 31, 2026, whichever comes first. The charter rate exists because the membership is new and the first 20 members shape the library.
After that, membership is $795/month. Your charter rate locks in for as long as you stay.
at our project rate
Every charter membership includes:
- Asynchronous access to Joe: text, voice, or video messages via ClarityFlow
- One-business-day response window: timeboxed each weekday morning
- 30+ guided resources across 9 categories: video, text, and downloadable worksheets
- One 30-minute call per calendar month with Joe
- Platform-specific guidance: WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, and custom builds
- Charter rate locked in for as long as you remain a member
One question is all it takes to find out.
Think of the website decision on your desk right now that you’d like a second opinion on before you sign. That’s your first message. Send it the day you join, and you’ll have my answer the next business morning.
If the membership doesn’t earn its line item, cancel. If it does, the charter rate is yours for as long as you stay.
Charter membership: $495/month or $4,950/year. First 20 members or December 31, 2026, whichever comes first.
Become a charter memberProject clients: if we’re building something for you, ask about adding a membership so the questions keep getting answered after launch.
