Planning and Strategy

Planning and strategy are crucial to creating websites and web applications that allow your company to scale over time.

Our approach guides marketers to discover the right solutions for creating a user-centered website or web application that provides business results. Our experience building websites allows us to anticipate how a website might need to change as the organization evolves. We’ll have numerous considerations along the way, but each will be guided by what will best achieve marketing outcomes.

Photo or product manager in a website redesign planning session

Areas of Expertise

Every engagement doesn’t always require every deliverable, but for end-to-end work like a redesign, this is what you can expect:

Discovery
Vetting assumptions, asking questions, and clarifying needs, so we can recommend the most appropriate solution

Strategic Planning
Determining out what initiatives will create the greatest impact for your company

Product Management
Balancing what we create against what delivers value to you and your business

Stakeholder Management
Assisting in any of your internal discussions, to provide insights or help manage expectations

Data Insights and Analytics
Studying user behavior data points to identify both visible and invisible opportunities for iterations and enhancements

Generative AI Strategy ✨
Supplementing strategic plans by harnessing best-in-class models to build better products more efficiently

Information Architecture (IA)
Designing a scalable site structure that is easy for visitors to use

Wireframe and Prototyping
Mapping out the structure, layout, and functionality as a blueprint for content creation and visual design work

Product Roadmaps
Defining the vision for implementation and how your website can best serve the business.

Planning and Strategy Engagements

We’re happy to support specific initiatives with our strategic capabilities. Here are a few ways clients can engage with us:

Website Redesigns
If you want your website to achieve better results or simply reflect your organization accurately, you can hire us to redesign your website.

Proactive Support
If you want a true partnership that continuously improves your website, you can hire us to proactively support your website.

Launching A New Website
If you are rebranding, creating a new company, or consolidating acquisitions under a single identity, you can hire us to launch your new website.

Scope Definition
If you want to understand what an appropriate scope looks like for your website, you can hire us to help plan your project.

Audits & Assessments
If you know something’s broken, but don’t know what, you can hire us to audit a part or all of your site (e.g. UX/Design, CMS/Administrative Experience, Code, Infrastructure, QA, Analytics, etc.) and make recommendations on what needs to be done.

RFP Writing
If you need help developing a quality RFP to find excellent candidates for a website redesign, we can help you define what this looks like in terms that will return quality candidates.

years creating digital strategies

200+

websites and web applications planned and executed

100s

of happy clients

Planning and Strategy Process

We listen and ask questions to understand your business and how the website plays into your vision of success. If you have a well-defined marketing strategy, we’ll plan for the website to drive it forward. If not, we’ll help you make one! Our experience building and your teams’ company knowledge come together to form data points that we use to create an effective website plan optimized for your budget.

When we start working together, it all begins with a plan. We call our planning process “Vision Setting.” Here’s how it breaks down:

We get your dedicated COLAB team up to speed on what’s been discussed during the sales process.

We onboard your team to our tools and practices so you have a transparent view of the work we’re doing.

Each of our subject matter experts reviews your known needs and then researches opportunities to discuss during our time together.

We ask direct questions to understand what drives your business and your current pain points.

We bring in other members of your team, as needed, to clarify or provide more technical information.

Our team forms a recommended approach based on what we’ve heard from your team, what you need, and where your company is headed. The resulting plan (a.k.a. product roadmap) will transparently show what we’ll work on, when, and what you can expect.

Photo of product delivery presenting plan and walking through process deck

FAQ

When do you do UX or Design? Isn’t that a part of planning?

Every agency is different! We typically work in iterations, meaning we simultaneously tackle small chunks of work. If you’ve heard of agile development, we generally do something similar. We do all the work required for a single component or feature to minimize waste. Once the iteration is complete, we show you what we’ve done. At this point, you will have a piece of the work that is complete enough to put in front of customers and provide the business with value.

We’ve done a lot of strategy and planning work already. Will that help cut expenses and get us a completed site sooner?

Maybe! The work we do during our planning and strategy is very focused on delivering a website that gets you results. If the other work you have done doesn’t have that specific context, it may not help us create an effective website. We will absolutely review the work and incorporate it whenever we can. This preparation will most likely let us move more quickly, but it isn’t a one-to-one equivalent to the deliverables we need to do the work in most cases.