Sitemap and architecture
Every page the site will have, how they relate, and the content model behind them. Enough for anyone to build from, not just us.
Work out what the site has to do before anyone builds it
A few weeks on your content, your audience and the systems you really run on, asking the awkward questions early. You come out of it with a fixed price and a firm date, not a range.
What discovery actually covers
Stakeholder interviews
We talk to the people who own the content, win the work and answer the phone — they know what the site needs to do better than anyone.
Audiences and journeys
Who you're really reaching, and the routes that matter: the buyer checking you out before a tender, the graduate deciding where to apply, the customer looking for a spec sheet at half past ten at night.
Information architecture
How your organisation thinks about its own work, turned into a structure. Card sorting where the answer isn't obvious, and a sitemap you sign off before a single page is designed.
Content audit
What's working, what's buried and what can be retired. Low traffic doesn't mean low value, so we read the numbers alongside the business context, never on their own.
Technical requirements
Integrations, compliance, IT policy, the third-party platforms you already depend on. We map all of it in the first weeks, so the plan is built around them from the start.
Competitor review
Where everyone in your sector says the same three things in the same three ways, and what that leaves open for you.
From kick-off to a costed plan
Discovery runs four to six weeks for most projects, mostly on video calls, with a session in person where it earns the travel. You'll know at the end of it what the site has to do, what it will cost and when it lands.
It's also where we find out whether we're right for each other. Better here than in month three.
Week one
Kick-off
We agree what success looks like and who needs to be in the room. Access, analytics and the existing site get pulled apart while everyone's diaries are still open.
Weeks two to three
In the room
Interviews, workshops and working sessions with the people who own the content and the people who sell the work. Where it helps, sessions with the audience themselves.
Week four
Structure
The sitemap, the content model and the journeys through them. By the end of the week you can see the whole site laid out on one page.
Week five
The plan
A technical specification, a content strategy and a project plan with milestones — and the fixed price and firm timeline that come out of them.
What you walk away with
Three documents, and a number. All of them yours.
Content strategy
What to write, what to move and what to retire, with an owner against each of it — plus image specs and standards, so the content work can start before the design does.
Technical specification
Integrations, permissions, dependencies and the routine maintenance the site will need. We keep it current for as long as we work together.
Discovery can be bought on its own, and the plan is written so anyone could build from it. Most people carry on with us. That's a decision you make at the end, with a price in front of you.
A fixed price, and no surprises after it
Discovery ends with a number, not a range. As long as the scope stays as agreed, that number is what you pay: no scope-creep invoices, no line items for work that was already defined.
If circumstances change and the scope genuinely has to move, we'll say so before we do the work and agree what it means with you.
What good planning is worth
Axter
550%
increase in engagement rate — from restructuring the site, not rewriting the content.
Arts University Bournemouth
#1
UK university for accessibility, off the back of a discovery-led rebuild.
Transparency International
500,000+
pageviews in 24 hours at the Corruption Perceptions Index launch.
Questions we get asked
Four to six weeks for most projects. A single-brand marketing site sits at the shorter end; a multi-site build with several audiences and a stack of integrations sits at the longer one. We'll tell you which one you are before you commit to anything.
If you want a fixed price, yes. Quoting a build without understanding the content, the integrations and the internal politics is guesswork, and the person who pays for guesswork is you — either in the invoice or in the timeline. If you've already done the work elsewhere, bring it and we'll scope from that instead.
The people who own the content, the people who sell the work, and someone who can sign things off. Usually four to eight people across a handful of sessions. We'll be specific once we know your organisation.
Mostly remote — video calls are quicker to schedule and easier on everyone's week. We'll come to you for the sessions where being in the room genuinely changes the outcome.
We charge £100 an hour, £800 a day. Discovery on a mid-size project is usually around 20 days. You get the number before we start, and it's the number you pay.
Yes. It's yours. Plenty of people use it to go out to tender, or to build the business case internally before committing to a build at all.
Let's get your site
where it should be
Get in touch with us with a bit about what you're needing, and we'll get back to you to kick things off to see how we can help you
Got it. We'll be back to you soon.
One of us will read it properly and reply — usually the same working day. In the meantime, there's more of the work to look through: