Joe, embedded with your leadership team, on retainer
For web programs big enough to need someone accountable for the experience across teams, and too big to leave it to whoever has bandwidth.
You’ve got developers. You’ve got an agency, or two. You’ve got a communications team with a content calendar and a brand team with opinions. What you don’t have is one person whose job is to make sure the website serves the people it’s for, in every sprint, every vendor review, and every planning cycle. Right now that’s a job with no name on it.
Experience Strategy Leadership is a monthly retainer that puts Joe on your team. In your planning. In your vendor reviews. In your sprints. And hands-on when it helps, on the front-end code and the content that make up most of what a visitor sees. This is how our retainer clients work with us, one of them since 2012.
What changes when Joe is on the team
The experience gets an owner who isn’t also selling you the next phase.
In the process, not outside it
Sprint planning, design reviews, vendor check-ins, the release calendar. Joe works inside your rhythm, on your tools, with your people.
No stake in the scope
Your agency wants the next phase. Your platform vendor wants the upgrade. Joe wants the site to work, and he’ll say so when the proposal on the table won’t get you there.
Hands on the keyboard when it helps
Joe writes front-end code for a Fortune 500 corporate site. When the fastest path is to build the prototype or fix the CSS himself, he does. When it isn’t, he directs whoever should.
Sized to the quarter
A brand refresh this quarter and maintenance the next? The retainer flexes with the work. We’ll agree on hours that fit, and revisit when the calendar changes.
What we put in place so it outlasts us
The goal is a team that makes good decisions about the experience whether or not Joe is in the room that day.
Standing design reviews
A predictable place and time where work gets looked at before it ships, with the same questions asked every time.
Numbers you own
The handful of measures that tell you whether the site is doing its job, reported in a form your executives will read.
A prioritization method that holds
A written way to rank what the site needs against what the business needs and what the team can ship, so the loudest request stops winning by default.
One story across teams
Communications, brand, product, and the vendors working from the same decisions, written down where all of them can find them.
Improvement between redesigns
Testing, research, and small fixes shipped every sprint, so the site gets better in the years between the big projects instead of decaying toward the next one.
Your people get better at this
Your team learns the questions by watching them get asked. The point is a team that can do this without us.
What our retainer clients have actually asked us to do
Five retainers keep us busy today, most of them inside national media and entertainment companies. We don’t name them. Here’s the shape of the work.
Migrate 21 web properties without losing the plot
The audits and journey mapping came first, then the migration plan, then a written record of every decision so each internal team could keep going after its phase.
Audit 200-plus cookie-consent implementations in a week
Across a large family of sites, we built the checklist, ran it on more than 200 implementations in one week, and handed the findings to the teams that owned each property.
Document 270-plus security false positives so engineering could set them aside
A security scan produced hundreds of findings, and every one cost a developer time to check. We worked through them, documented the 270-plus that were noise, and gave engineering a list it could set aside with confidence.
Be the whisper before the meeting
Directors through the chief communications officer keep Joe a message away for the question they’d rather not ask in the room: what does this proposal actually mean, what should I push on, what do I say when the CEO asks. That part of the job doesn’t show up in a deliverable list, and it’s the part they’d miss first.
Is this right for you?
A retainer makes sense when the experience needs an owner every week, whether or not anything is broken.
Good fit if you:
- Run a web program with multiple properties, vendors, or internal teams, and nobody owns the experience across them
- Want someone accountable for the experience strategy who isn’t also bidding on the next phase
- Have work that varies by quarter and would rather flex a retainer than hire, then lay off
- Need product, communications, brand, and engineering working from the same decisions
- Want a partner who’ll push back, in the room, with evidence
Not the right fit if you:
- Need occasional answers rather than a standing presence (that’s Experience Helpdesk)
- Have one project with a clear end date (that’s Complete Website Transformation)
- Want decisions that are already made executed without anyone questioning them
- Want a consultant who stays out of the implementation
Already an Experience Helpdesk member?
The retainer is the next step up. The question history you’ve built with Joe becomes the starting point for the planning work, and the membership continues alongside it.
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.
See Experience Helpdesk →Website
Roadmapping
Six weeks of discovery. Fixed-scope project.
See Website Roadmapping →Experience Strategy
Leadership
Joe embedded with your leadership team. Monthly retainer.
How we start
Retainers are scoped to the program, so this one starts with a conversation.
Tell us about the program
Your properties, your vendors, your team, what’s on the calendar for the next two quarters, and what’s been going wrong. From there we can tell you whether a retainer fits, what it would cover, and roughly what it would cost.
If the honest answer is that a membership or a project would serve you better, we’ll say that instead.
Start a conversationGive the experience an owner
Every quarter the website belongs to everyone is a quarter it belongs to no one.
The vendors will keep proposing. The teams will keep shipping. Somebody has to hold the question of whether any of it serves the people the site is for, and hold it every week. That’s the job.
Ready to talk it through?
Tell us about the program and we’ll tell you whether a retainer fits.
Start a conversation Not there yet? Start with Experience Helpdesk