When you’re considering a significant investment in your website or marketing, it’s natural to want to know exactly what you’re getting, what it will cost, and how long it will take. We want to give you those answers too.
But here’s the challenge: the best answers come from understanding your business deeply; your goals, your customers, your technology, your constraints. Without that understanding, any proposal we give you is based on assumptions. And assumptions lead to scope gaps, misaligned expectations, and budgets that don’t reflect reality.
That’s why, for complex projects, we often recommend starting with a discovery or strategy engagement before scoping the larger work.
What Discovery Actually Is
Discovery is a focused engagement, typically in the $15,000-$25,000 range, designed to get us deep into your business before we propose a solution.
For website projects, this might include stakeholder interviews, technical audits, UX analysis, requirements gathering, and competitive research. The deliverable is usually a detailed project roadmap, defined requirements, and a scoped proposal for the build, grounded in what we’ve learned, not what we’ve guessed.
For marketing engagements, discovery might look like a strategy engagement where we define your personas, map the customer journey, audit your current performance, understand your tech stack, and establish baseline KPIs. From there, we can build a marketing roadmap or campaign plan that’s tailored to where you are and where you’re trying to go.
The output varies depending on the engagement, but the purpose is the same: to get the information we need to do the work right.
Why This Works Better for Everyone
You get a right-sized proposal. When we understand your business, we can scope work accurately. You’re not paying for things you don’t need, and we’re not leaving out things you do. The proposal that comes out of discovery reflects reality, not assumptions.
You reduce risk. A $20,000 discovery engagement is a smaller commitment than a $150,000 website build. It gives both of us a chance to work together, understand each other’s communication styles, and make sure the partnership is a good fit before you’re deep into a large project.
We give you better advice. The recommendations we make after discovery are grounded in your actual data, your actual customers, and your actual goals. We’re not pattern-matching from other clients or making generic suggestions. We’re advising based on what we’ve learned about your specific situation.
It’s an easier yes. Sometimes the right move is clear, but the size of the commitment feels like a lot. Discovery is a baby step. It moves you forward, gets you valuable insight, and sets up the larger engagement, without requiring you to commit to the whole thing upfront.
What Happens After Discovery
At the end of a discovery engagement, you’ll have a clear view of what the larger project should look like: scope, timeline, and investment. You’ll also have a deliverable you can use regardless of what you decide next: a requirements document, a strategy roadmap, an audit with prioritized recommendations, etc.
If we move forward together, discovery rolls right into execution. If you decide to go a different direction or pause the work, you still walk away with something valuable.
When Discovery Makes Sense
Not every project needs discovery. If the scope is straightforward and well-defined, we can often move straight to a proposal.
But if your project involves complexity—multiple stakeholders, undefined requirements, integration with existing systems, or strategic decisions that need to be made before execution—discovery is usually the right starting point.
It’s also the right fit if you’ve been burned before by projects that went sideways because the scope wasn’t clear, partnerships that burned you, or if you want to validate that we’re the right partner before committing to a larger engagement.
A Smaller Step Toward a Better Outcome
I know it can feel counterintuitive to add a phase before the “real” work starts. But the work performed in discovery is the “real” work. It’s the strategy that sets the foundation from which we will build. In our experience, projects that begin with discovery go smoother, stay on budget, and deliver better results.
You’re not paying for us to figure out what we should have known from the start. You’re investing in the foundation that makes the larger project successful.
If you’re weighing a significant engagement and want to start with a smaller commitment, let’s talk about what discovery could look like for your specific situation.
