Writing

How we work, and what we have found to be true about small business websites. We publish when there is something worth writing down rather than to a schedule, so this page is short on purpose.

• 14 September 20263 min readWhy we scan a business before we quote itA quote written before anyone has looked at the site, the funnel and the follow-up is a guess with a number on it. Here is what we look at first, and why.Most proposals for small-business web and marketing work are written from a conversation. The owner describes the problem, the agency describes a package, and a number appears at the bottom of a PDF. Nobody has looked at the thing being fixed. The number is a guess dressed as a quote.Read the article
• 14 September 20263 min readThe four disciplines are one loop, not four projectsA logo from one place, a website from another, a CRM nobody finished, and no way to tell which is working. Why that outcome is structural, and what changes when the four are built as one system.Here is the shape of the problem we see most often. A business buys a logo from a designer. A year later it buys a website from a web studio, which redraws the logo slightly because the original files were never handed over. Later still it buys a CRM subscription, which someone half-configures and nobody finishes. Then it buys ads, which send traffic to the website, which captures enquiries into an inbox, which nobody has time to work.Read the article
• 14 September 20263 min readWhat “lead capture” actually means on a small business websiteIt is not a popup. It is whether an interested person can become an enquiry without hunting — and most sites fail it in three specific, fixable ways.“Lead capture” has been claimed by popup vendors, so it is worth reclaiming. It does not mean interrupting a reader. It means this: a person who has decided they are interested can turn that decision into a message to you, right now, from wherever they are on the site, without going looking for how.Read the article