Strategy
Strategy decides: what has to be done, in what order, and why, before spending a penny on development or setup.
When people call us
- "I want to know what my existing setup is worth before deciding anything."
- You have just taken over a company, or you're about to pass one on, and nobody knows what its digital estate includes.
- You're paying for subscriptions nobody can account for.
- You're hesitating between three quotes whose differences you don't understand.
- You're about to launch a large digital project.
What we do
An audit of what you have: what runs, where, in whose name, at what cost, with what risks. A map of the digital chain and its dependencies. A roadmap: what has to be done over 12 to 24 months, prioritised and costed. Choosing and comparing tools: content management system, ERP (the software that runs your operations: sales, stock, invoicing), collaboration suite, hosting. Technical trade-offs: fix or rebuild, stay or migrate, buy or build, with what each option costs and what it commits you to.
What sets this advice apart is that it’s written by the people who carry it out. Every recommendation can be costed because we know the work it represents, and none of it rests on guesswork. A roadmap nobody in the room knows how to carry out is worth nothing. And “what you have holds up, keep it” is a normal conclusion.
Start with a website audit
Many engagements start there: your website, assessed across nine dimensions (security, speed, search visibility, accessibility, compliance, among others) on observed facts, page by page. You get the score, the detail page by page, and what to fix first, to be handed to whoever you choose. The method is published: what we look at, how it’s scored, what you receive. And the audit is ordered online, at the scope you choose.
Examples of deliverables
- Audit report: what runs, where, in whose name, at what cost, with what risks.
- A map of the digital chain and its dependencies.
- A prioritised, costed roadmap, over 12 to 24 months.
- Tool comparison: the viable options, what they cost, what they commit you to.
- A written decision note: the options, their cost, their risk, and a recommendation we stand behind.
- A decision summary you can present to your co-owners or your bank.
Questions
You audit, then you sell the work: isn't that a conflict of interest?
The question is fair, and here is how we answer it.
First, an audit concluding “what you have holds up, leave it alone” is a normal deliverable here, not a failure. Next, we have no technology to push: we resell no licences and we’re affiliated with no vendor, so nothing pushes us towards one solution rather than another. Finally, a scoping exercise can be used to get quotes elsewhere: the specifications are yours, and they are written so that someone else can carry them out.
How do you price a scoping exercise?
It depends on what you want to achieve, and that’s exactly the first thing we talk about. We talk, we scope, and you receive a quote that binds us, not an estimate that will move three times.
What we can say straight away: we’re not the cheapest option, and that’s not what we’re trying to be.
You don't publish your rates: how do we know what we're getting into?
Because we don’t sell packaged work. A displayed price assumes identical work for everyone; yet the same request can cost five times as much depending on what you already have and the level of quality required.
Displaying a figure would mean either lying to you, or selling you a scope you don’t fit into. We scope first, we price second, and that figure holds. Published price ranges, and what separates two quotes for the same site, are set out in our guide to website cost.
One exception, and the same rule explains it: the website audit is the only work of ours whose scope can be bounded in advance, by the number of pages examined. Its price is therefore published, and it can be ordered online, at sitecheck.z29k.com.
Does an audit with you always end in a large project?
No. We will tell you what we see, that’s the minimum, but the order of priorities stays yours, and “nothing for now” is a valid answer.
Most of our engagements widen over time; none begins with an obligation. The website audit, as it happens, is ordered online without talking to us, and the action plan that comes with it is written to be carried out by whoever you choose.
How long does an audit take with you?
Faster than you’re used to. A brochure site takes a matter of weeks. So does a full rebuild, most of the time.
The limiting factor is almost always how quickly decisions and content come from your side, not production.
We already have someone advising us. What do you add?
Good. Two cases.
Either they cover everything, and there’s nothing to do. Or they cover the website, and the rest (domains, email, hosting, internal tools, automation) is floating about somewhere. That’s often where we come in, without replacing anyone.
We just want a view on one specific point. Do you take on that kind of work?
Yes, and it’s actually the most common case. A fix, a migration, an audit, a feature: we take it.
The whole chain is what we can do, not what we require. The only difference from someone who does nothing else is that we will tell you if the problem you report actually lies elsewhere.
Tell us about your project, or your problem.
Describe your situation in a few lines, however it comes to you. You get our first take, in writing: what we understand, what we would do, where to start. Not an automatic acknowledgement, and no sales follow-up: an answer you can use, even if it stops there.