Every engagement opens the same way: two weeks of looking, no making. It is the least glamorous part of the process and the part that saves the most money.
Look at the numbers before the pictures
Traffic that does not convert is a message problem. Conversion that does not repeat is a product problem. Neither is fixed by a new colour palette, and both are routinely handed to designers as if they were.
If you cannot say who it is not for, you have not decided who it is for.
The five questions
- Who is the customer you would be happy to have a hundred more of?
- What do they believe before they meet you?
- What must they believe to buy?
- What is the single thing standing between those two states?
- What are you saying instead?
The answers usually fit on one page. That page becomes the brief, and the brief becomes the work.
