The Website You're Building should support the sales you're planning.
"A website is a sales engine on a marketing platform." - Daniel DiGriz
Website Audit
You want a "SWaudit" before you've bought it.
Problem
Your website is OK, but it’s not winning awards in the form of audience engagement and steady leads.
Hurdle
You might need an overhaul, but you're guessing at what will help. You could hurt your search profile or throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Solution
Better audits add context: things to keep, opportunities to evolve, openings left by your competition, and strategies to maximize gains.
Mandate
A website should be a lead engine that can sustain you through at least several years of thoughtful sales & marketing campaigns.
A website SWaudit™ is a detailed analysis of your website for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & competitor Threats. It utilizes UX, SEO, Content Strategy, and SWOT Analysis.
Strengths
- Our domain is well aged
- Brand has high association with the industry
- Customers / testimonials are enthusiastic
- We have a lot of older content
- We have a big email list fed by the site
See Interview Notes
Weaknesses
- Inconsistent branding
- No ongoing program of fresh content
- Some useless content & obsolete media
- Content is often not useful to our end-users
- Case studies reflect least profitable product line
See Analysis with Screenshots
Opportunities
- Our competitors' content is typically generic
- Their ongoing content strategy is visibly weak
- They've dropped multiple balls on SEO
- We have many unexploited case studies
- We have a solid brand story to guide campaigns
- Our UX is typically smoother that competitors
- We have a content & campaign budget
Threats
- Top 3 competitors have content program
- Top 2 competitors have active on-page SEO
- Top 1 competitor has aggressive off-page SEO
- Top 3 competitors have aged content
- Top 1 competitor has 900% more client assets
See Detailed Comparison
Client Example
You know you need this.
Get a SWaudit for your site,
and build it right.
"Done" counts because, while we have all the ideas, opportunity has moved on.
Project Delivery
When you're under the gun, get the website done.
Problem
Despite best intentions, projects that need consensus between internal stakeholders & third parties tends to go past schedule or over budget.
Hurdle
You could push onward, damn the roadblocks, but your wish list will get slimmer, balls will get dropped, and long-term goals will fall off the table.
Solution
MadPipe will direct the project, get everyone aligned around the goals of your collateral, and stay 3-steps ahead with science-based input on UX, SEO, & content strategy.
Mandate
You can't compromise on a site that has internal support & nurtures prospects at each stage of the sales funnel—from ideation to negotiation.
With MadPipe, "done" is a constant refrain. With expert guidance, you'll know you're succeeding by feeling the increased collaboration, hearing growing consensus, and seeing steady incremental progress—but most of all, by putting things continually in the "done" column.
TO DO
Server Setup
🕓Nov 15
Forms Setup
🕓Nov 15
IN PROGRESS
Home Page Copy
🕓Oct 31
Site Map
🕓Oct 31
Home Page Layout
🕓Nov 1
DONE
Color Palette
🕓Oct 1
Font Set
🕓Oct 15
GoLive Plan
🕓Dec 31
Your project won't stall
if we've got the ball.
Your brand is what people recognize about you, and then what they remember.
Branding
If you want to close, be at home in your clothes.
Problem
Your competition stand out, but it's more than a color—who isn’t using some shade of blue? You want to be as recognizable as FedEx, Cisco, 3M, or Caterpillar.
Hurdle
You’re too close to the brand to translate the intellectual message into emotional content. You neither want it to bog down in committee nor entrust it to a lone designer.
Solution
Let’s expand your color palette and font stack without losing the old, create a simple brand guide & templates, and nail the tag line, so everyone can FEEL what you stand for.
Mandate
Your branding needs to reflect the company’s tone, look like a million bucks, stay consistent (vs. all over the map), and be as identifiable as the Green Bay Packers.
MadPipe is going to work with your internal team, your designer (if you have one), our designer if you don't and we need one (you might not!), and spin your brand into a better version of itself.
They'll know your name
when you don't look the same.
Blah, blah, blah, blah. That's content without strategy.
Content Strategy
Fascinate and tantalize; don't boilerplate or patronize.
Problem
End-users decisions don't rest solely on product features or assorted details about a company. You need to tell an overall story. Visitors need to see themselves in that story.
Hurdle
You can assemble info and riff on what a visitor should hear, but you’re close enough to it that you risk leaving out the user journey through each stage of the sales funnel.
Solution
MadPipe plots out how differing visitors interact with your content from ideation to negotiation, taking into account how you get leads & how you WANT to get leads.
Mandate
You want to account for users entering the content in different places from multiple sources and naturally introduce them to your fundamental sales argument.
From now on, you have the equivalent of a managing editor. MadPipe will blueprint your sitemap and content editorial structure, collaborating with your SMEs and anyone you have working content and design. Your website will get your audience into the boat, regardless of their point of entry.
If you laid out your website
and other collateral like a magazine editor.
You’d act as though you HAVE to
keep people coming back every month.
They skip, skim, and jump around.
You'll be there when they turn around.
Eliminate friction. The user's goal is what drives.
User Experience
When the user's goal drives, the company thrives.
Problem
Most websites are counterintuitive and follow design fads that are short-lived and outdated by the time they get implemented.
Hurdle
You could rely on just curb appeal, but that's only half the equation. You could mimic competitors, but then you’re not standing out.
Solution
MadPipe will advocate for the audience. Priority one is following the user's mental model. The result is a site that's intuitive and beautiful.
Mandate
There are no dead ends or roadblocks allowed in the visitor's journey. Nothing may impede the company's story and sales argument.
Your message will bust through boredom, trounce gimmicks, and beat the snot out of bland competitors. You'll know it's working from analytics that reflect deeper engagement.
Have you ever logged in,
To a tool or eCommerce site you’ve used for years—and they’ve updated the interface?
It's cleaner and prettier,
There are new features, but what used to take one click now takes three.
And nothing is where you expect.
You can't find anything, and most of the items on the screen don't help you achieve your goal.
Put function first.
You'll answer their thirst.
Examples
Madpipe will offer a handful of 'examples' but: Be aware, MadPipe is not a web design studio. MadPipe leads website projects to completion, coordinating the efforts of multiple vendors, ensuring the site both satisfies the project owners' desired outcomes and serves as a suitable marketing and sales platform. Most web design studios do NOT do that work.
Select projects: On occasional select projects, through our network of associates, MadPipe will actually do the web dev ourselves. It's rare, and usually a product of an existing client or partner relationship, and therefore MadPipe doesn't advertise as web developers. You won't find a traditional portfolio on the site.
Free Advice
For your website project.
Beware of the portfolio-driven decisions.
A lot of vendor selection begins with studying portfolios; that may not be the most fruitful approach. Anyone (yes, we're saying anyone) can build a website that looks good in a couple of hours. Really good, in fact. A superb looking site can be spun up overnight in India. That isn't widely admitted (we like to think there's a secret sauce), but it's true. Design conventions are mostly a product of trend, and web dev is a commodity service. There's barely any website design we can find that we or anyone can't duplicate quickly and easily. On look and feel, it's a given that every brand is going to be unique, and looking for "There! That! That's what I want!" is a recipe for a clone that'll feel like a clone when it serves as the setting for your brand message.
Treat it as a full-fledged project.
A LOT of excellent visual studios are terrible at development (and only a developer would know), at project management (getting to 'done' is a skill), and at ensuring a website serves as a marketing engine. Those are where MadPipe excels. If you're needing proof of design capability, MadPipe probably isn't your best fit. However, when MadPipe takes on such website projects, sometimes we're both developer and designer, sometimes we're neither, and sometimes the roles are split, with a designer handing us mockups. We'll work with any vendor(s) you choose. Where MadPipe adds value is ensuring a site project with multiple moving parts gets completed to spec, that the spec makes sense, and owner goals are served.
Be wary of specialists.
MadPipe is industry and business model agnostic. The knee jerk impulse to find a legal vendor because you're in law (or ecommerce b/c you're in ecommerce) is one reason law sites (for instance) are so similar and boring. MadPipe refuses to specialize, because the best insight on user experience (UX) comes from inputs occurring across multiple industries. Specialist work tends to mirror existing examples while struggling to differentiate. That tension produces a less effective competitive footprint. MadPipe isn't thinking about a website in a vacuum, but as collateral in a larger effort by a firm to channel its voice and message in a way that competitors don't, recruiting enthusiasts in a way people who think in silos can't. If that's not a fit for you, no sweat—there are LOTS of specialists you can find.
Don't let the platform drive.
MadPipe is platform agnostic. It's not very hard for anyone in this business to make a given platform do what you want. Nearly every vendor has a preferred 'stack'. MadPipe is comfortable with most of them, but does have opinions about some. E.g. Shopify is one of the most impressive eCommerce toolsets. WordPress is an incredibly flexible canvas for any design. New (and current) platforms evolve over time to accommodate UI trends that stick. If we don't use yours (fooCommerce, StunningBuilder, gooberHost, or whatever), it's just because no one bothers to track them all. Owning a couple of brands of hammer is enough. When something truly innovative occurs in this industry, most of us are aware of it.
Visuals
A modest collection of recent vintage.
With the above caveats, here are some example websites. We aren't going to offer many or try to hit every type (service, product, B2B, B2C, eCommerce) or industry (tech, law, hospitality, etc) because we're not trying to convince you to choose us as the visual designer, per se.
ALL
ALL
- B2C
- B2B
Various Thoughts
Because you're still here, so . . .
