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The strategy surrounding ecommerce is quite a big (and broad) topic. In order to understand ecommerce strategy, we first need to lay down a good foundation. This episode will cover the best practices and basic concepts of ecommerce user experience. We’ll dive deeper into conversion funnels, features for key pages, and chat about ecommerce fundamentals. Once we comprehend the basics, we can move into more advanced concepts. There is a free resource available at unstrategic.com/ecommerce-best-practices

Do you find that you have time on your hands due to COVID-19? If so, then there are plenty of available (free) resources out there that you can use to develop your skillset. Whether you’re just looking to learn more about core subjects or want to learn something specific, we’ve compiled a list of potential skills development sites to help you work on your Skills Development During a Pandemic. Staring down an ambiguous future, now might be the best time to up your game in certain areas or search for new professional opportunities.

This episode concludes the Client Acclimation framework and the Ramping up on Client Accounts series with Part 3. We will cover the Community and Collaboration phases that make up Day 2 of the process. For instance, we’ll dive into online communities, discussion boards, and social media. In order to find more relevant insight for our clients. There is an infographic overview of the Client Acclimation framework and an example Client Collaboration Questionnaire at https://unstrategic.com/client-acclimation/ – feel free to download, copy, and use these resources to help with ramping up on your own client accounts.

Having access to lots of information is great. But how do we harvest good insights from all that information? Then how do we organize it to make it useful? Today, we’re continuing our series on Ramping up on Client Accounts. We’ll share a process for extracting pertinent data from all the info out there. We will cover what questions you’ll want to ask while consuming information. And finally, we’ll talk about high-level actions for getting through dozens of items of materials (articles, publications, etc.) in a single day. This is the Cognition phase of the Client Acclimation framework.

Do you have a process for ramping up on client accounts? Can you learn about a new industry or market in less than a week? I’d like to share a framework that I call Client Acclimation, which consists of Construction, Cognition, Community, and Collaboration. I’ll break down each step for knowledge gain (and insight) into new client accounts including their industries and markets. This will be a few (2-3) part series because there is a lot of information to cover. I also want to share each step in every phase so listeners can replicate the process. Today’s episode will consist of constructing views of the client, industry, and markets.

We all know it can be difficult to get a consensus with your client stakeholders on design. Team members can argue over trivial elements like an image or color. Instead of wasting valuable project time and budget in design cycles, workshop with your clients first. We’re going to list out several exercises to perform with clients that will help drive design direction. In addition, there is a downloadable resource available at https://unstrategic.com/design-exercises/

Performing a UX Audit can be a really fun task. But it can also be daunting if we don’t have any analytics data. So how do we help clients that come to us who need to improve their websites, but there’s no good data to go off of? Don’t fret – there are several methodologies that help with this type of scenario. We will cover them in this podcast episode. There is also a downloadable resource at: https://unstrategic.com/perform-ux-audit/

Creating good custom web proposals can be time-consuming. In addition, there’s no guarantee you’ll win the business by putting together a bespoke proposal. I’d like to share A Guide for Creating Custom Web Proposals with examples, to help you produce higher quality proposals. I’ve created handcrafted documents much faster using this formula. Above all, my hope is that it will help you produce better creative material to send to your prospects. Therefore, potentially winning better and bigger clients. Download the resource here: https://unstrategic.com/custom-web-proposals/

Today we chat with Patrick Richardson, the U.S. Managing Director of hedgehoglabs.com – his background includes advertising, marketing, design, mobile apps, and much more. Topics range from agency life to team-building, the inner workings of a design sprint, to providing strategic insights for clients. If you’d like to learn more about Patrick or get in touch for a project, feel free to reach out to him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickrichardson/

There are so many factors and variables that determine the performance on our website conversion rates. Today, we’ll talk about factors within our control, factors outside our control, manipulation of conversion rates, and finally touch on optimization for conversion rates.

Here is the continuation of Strategic Roadmapping. Today, we’ll be covering the last two phases of a roadmapping engagement. Feel free to follow along with the Trello Board (https://trello.com/b/LU2OMbPY/strategy-roadmap-unstrategic-podcast). Last week, we covered Phase 1: Project Opening and Phase 2: Define Current State. This week, we’ll detail Phase 3: Identify Ideal State and Phase 4: Roadmap. Thanks for joining!

Roadmaps should be considered a dynamic and responsive plan that aims to connect the vision and objectives of a project with strategic actions or steps. They can be very useful when starting off on a web initiative. For this podcast episode, I have created this Trello Board (https://trello.com/b/LU2OMbPY/strategy-roadmap-unstrategic-podcast) to visually display and help with the phases of roadmapping a web engagement (i.e. website, web project, digital product). Today, we’ll cover the first two phases (out of four) of strategic roadmapping.

I’m excited to talk about Project Scope Development today – it’s a process to determine and document a list of specific goals, deliverables, tasks, price estimates and timeline estimates for a web project. Every project will be different, but this guide should act as a blueprint for determining scope to get your project off to the right start. Find the downloadable resource here: https://unstrategic.com/project-scope/

In this episode, we talk about the Digital Strategy Matrix, which we’ve designed to help structure digital strategy. If we understand all the elements and variables of strategy, and the tactics which can get us closer to our results. Then we can make better informed decisions, which will materialize into good recommendations for our clients. Strategy is always changing dependent on goals, new stakeholders, market forces, and other miscellaneous items. As web strategists, we need to be able to understand the environment in which strategy develops based on a surrounding structure, not a linear process. Find the downloadable resource here: https://unstrategic.com/strategy-matrix/

Hey guys, we are back with more episodes of unSTRATEGIC – The Podcast about Digital Strategy. We are going to look at holistic strategy and start tying things together while diving deeper on the tactics digital strategists use to effectively show results. I’m your host, Adam James Lamagna, join us January 23rd, 2019 for the new episodes of unSTRATEGIC.

Meet Matt O’Bryant, he’s the Director of Strategy at a  Providence-based web agency called Oomph, Inc. He helps to lead an agency, provide strategic direction for clients, and offers a number of insights into today’s digital sphere. Matt has had many roles in the tech space from web admin to project management to digital strategy. Our chat covers analytics, personas, business, and lots of cool tools to help with strategy. Let’s welcome Matt O’Bryant.

Which questions should you be asking in your strategy sessions? That’s a good question, and the answer will depend on what challenge you’re trying to solve. But there are different styles of questions you should be asking your participants. Opening questions get you started and help you gather information. Exploration questions help you investigate, but also explore opportunities. Assessment questions help you stay on track. Closing questions let you close the loop and think about next steps.

Meet Aileen McDonough, she’s the owner of 3am Writers (http://www.3amwriters.com/), a creative communications firm based in Rhode Island. Aileen is a content strategist, consultant, and writer; she really loves creating content and gives some great tips in this episode. Listen to our strategy talk about content in the digital space; we cover content calendars, content strategy, social media, and more.

Being an Account Manager comes down to 3 things: Communication, Value, and Flexibility. But it’s also a strategic position. In this episode we’ll explore strategy in account management. I’ve included a Strategic Account Plan Template that you can find on the unSTRATEGIC blog.

Meet Michelle Schulp, she’s the owner of Marktime Media (http://marktimemedia.com/) where she makes design frictionless. Michelle is a designer, front-end developer, and strategist. She gives talks in the WordPress and design communities, and is super passionate about design and technology. Listen to our digital strategy chat. If you want to check out Michelle’s personal blog: http://mynameismichelle.com/