Six weeks of discovery before anyone designs anything
Your team can build. Nobody’s written down what the site is for.
You’ve got designers and developers who know their craft, or an agency you trust. But the last project ran long, the stakeholders never agreed, and the site that shipped was a compromise nobody would have chosen on purpose. Nobody’s at fault. The requirements were never written down, so everyone built toward a different picture.
Website Roadmapping is the six-week discovery phase on its own, for $7,495. Joe leads the research and strategy, and you come out with business requirements, user research, a site structure, and a technical blueprint that any team can build from, yours or ours.
What happens when the building starts first
Talented people solve the problem in front of them. If the problem was never defined, they solve the one they assume, and each of them assumes a different one.
So the project ends up with:
- Design rounds that don’t converge, because two stakeholders want two different sites and nothing on paper says which one you’re building
- Requirements that change mid-build, because they were discovered mid-build
- Sections that tell different stories, because different people wrote them from different assumptions
- A team that did good work on the wrong problem, and knows it
What changes in six weeks
The picture everyone’s building toward gets written down.
Joe works alongside your designers, developers, and stakeholders to produce the strategic foundation the build needs. Research and documented requirements your whole team can point to when the next argument starts.
What you’ll have when we’re done
Three documents every website project needs and most skip:
Business requirements
- What the site has to accomplish and how you’ll measure it
- Who your customers are, what they need, and how they decide
- Where you sit against the alternatives and where you can win
- What has to connect to what
UX architecture
- User stories that tie what visitors want to what you need them to do
- Direction for the home page
- Site structure and navigation for the home page and every page layout the site needs
- A content plan that builds trust and leads to the next step
- Where the friction is today and how to remove it
Technical blueprint
- Integration specs for the tools you already use
- Performance targets and accessibility requirements
- What has to be secure, and how
- A recommended build order, with the reasoning
- Design system direction: how visual decisions should serve the strategy
Who works on your roadmap
Joe, with your team in the room.
Joe Taylor Jr. leads the discovery
He runs the workshops, does the customer research, and writes the requirements. He holds a current Nielsen Norman Group UX Master Certification and has been building for the web since 1999, for national media companies and community health nonprofits alike. You work with him directly for all six weeks.
Our content team
They inventory what you have, find what’s missing, and shape the content plan, so the site structure is based on what you’ll actually publish and not on a wishlist.
Your designers and developers
They’re in the working sessions from week one. The roadmap is written for them, in their terms, and they’ll know why every decision was made because they watched it get made.
The handoff
The handoff is a walkthrough. Joe takes your design and development leads through the thinking behind every decision and answers their questions until they can build without us.
Is this right for you?
For teams that can execute and need the direction written down first.
You’re a fit if
- You have designers and developers, in-house or at an agency, and you want them building from requirements instead of assumptions
- You want the requirements locked before the first mockup
- Research and competitive data change your decisions
- You’d rather spend six weeks planning than six months rebuilding
- You can give the six weeks, including your stakeholders’ time in workshops
Not a fit if
- You need the whole site designed and built (that’s Complete Website Transformation)
- You want to start with mockups and figure out the requirements later
- The decisions have already been made and research won’t change them
- You don’t have anyone to build from what we produce
Investment and timeline
Six weeks, with Joe in the room every week. $7,495.
That’s the whole price for the discovery phase, and it’s our smallest engagement. Half is due at signing to reserve your six weeks on the calendar; the other half when the findings are delivered at the end of week six. Nonprofits get a discount, and the intake applies it.
Answer the intake questions and a proposal with the price, the schedule, and the deliverables comes back to you, online and as a PDF. No call required.
Start here
The proposal takes a few minutes. The six weeks start when you’re ready.
Get your proposal
The intake asks about your organization, your team, and what you’re trying to build. Then:
- A proposal with the price, timeline, and deliverables comes back, online and as a PDF
- You review it on your own time, with whoever needs to see it
- If it works, accept it and we’ll set a start date
- If it doesn’t, you’ve spent a few minutes and know exactly what discovery costs
Where this sits among our services
Four ways to work with us. Plan the site, build it, put a strategist on the leadership team, or keep it accurate after launch.
Website
Roadmapping
Write down what the site is for before anyone builds it.
Complete Website
Transformation
Discovery, design, and a WordPress build. One scope.
See Complete Website Transformation →Experience Strategy
Leadership
A senior strategist on your leadership team, without the hire.
See Experience Strategy Leadership →Content
Operations
The updates that keep a live site accurate, month after month.
See Content Operations →While your team builds
Questions come up during the build that the roadmap didn’t anticipate. Every Roadmapping client gets the Client Library, the worksheets and guides we use on our own client work, from kickoff through a year after launch. And if the build turns out to need us too, the roadmap carries straight into a Complete Website Transformation without repeating discovery.
Give your team the document they’ve been building without
Your designers can’t interview your customers while they’re designing. Your developers can’t write the requirements while they’re coding.
Somebody has to do that part first, and it has to be written down where everyone can see it. Six weeks with Joe gets it done, and what you get is yours to build from with any team you choose.
Ready to start?
Answer the intake questions. A proposal comes back to you, online and as a PDF, with the $7,495 price, the schedule, and everything you’ll have at the end of week six.
Get your proposal Want the build too? See Complete Website Transformation