The website
A website has two halves: a shape the category expects, and coverage of every moment that matters. Most sites have only the first. They take the standard sitemap for their category and fill it with copy, so the pages look right and say little.
The website is the only build lit in every live cell. Whatever a buyer hears from an ad, a pitch or an assistant, they check it on the site.
in 10 cells
Why it matters for being chosen
Two stages, in every moment: Answered (does the site answer this buyer’s question?) and Bought (does the landing page repeat the reason, show proof and make the next step easy?). It also feeds Found, because assistants and search can only send buyers to pages that exist.
Kestrel’s old site had 14 pages and a twelve-post blog. 84 of the 149 moments had no page at all. The other 65 landed on a page that touched the subject without answering it.
Where your craft is
The sitemap can be derived. What can’t be derived is the page a buyer remembers: the headline in their words, the problem page that sounds like it was written by someone who has stood on their floor, the comparison that is fair to the rival and still makes the choice obvious. That’s writing and design, and it’s yours.
The seven steps
The same anatomy as every build, with this build’s specifics and Kestrel’s example.
List the page types buyers in the category expect (services, solutions by problem, industries, roles, case studies, approach, team, insights), and set the story spine every page repeats: the problem in the buyer’s words, the reason, the proof pattern and the way out.
Work the full grid. Kestrel’s map is 8 choosers, 7 problems, 10 journey steps and 5 buying modes: 64 live cells and 149 moments, each traced to its source. The site has to answer all of them.
Score every moment on three tests (worth winning, a true reason there, still open), then audit the current site against all 149. The scores set the order of work. They don’t decide which moments get a page.
Put every moment into the shape. At Kestrel, four generic solutions pages were replaced by seven real problems, and Services split into three pages plus “What if the review finds nothing?” and “Can you start this month?”. The result: 47 pages, each traced to the moments it answers.
Brief each page, then each section. A page carries five to eight jobs; brief them together and they blur into general copy. A section that can’t name its job gets cut.
Give every existing page a decision: preserve, improve, merge, replace or deprecate, with a written reason. Check one reason, one truth: the price range, duration and terms are identical on the site, in proposals and in listings.
Measure each page by the stage it carries, never by its traffic. Answered should rise first, Found a quarter or two later, Bought wherever price and the way out now sit side by side.
From the finished example
“When output is flat”, the P1 problem page. The book writes it in full; this is how it opens.
If your plant is running flat out and output hasn’t moved in a year, you’re not short of effort. You’re short of a clear view of where the capacity goes.
Kestrel, its clients and its people are invented.
The template
The measures
Common mistakes
Everyone at Kestrel knows what an operations review is, so nobody thought to explain it. Read each page as the plant manager who’s never hired a consultant.
The Loop for this build
Each quarter the Loop puts the site’s slice of the Score beside what was predicted, and asks one question per page family: did the stage this page carries move, for the moments it was built for? If Answered doesn’t rise, the pages aren’t answering, and no amount of promotion will fix that.
You should be, a little. One firm with one main offer: eight choosers, seven problems, ten steps, five buying modes, 149 moments and 47 pages, each with a page brief and a brief for every section. That’s why the method runs in software.
Do it in RocMode for Agencies
What stays yours: The headline, the story, the design and the judgement about what to cut.