Most web agencies send you a proposal. You accept it, pay a deposit, and then — for weeks — you're not quite sure what's happening. You get occasional check-ins. A staging link appears. Then another. Then a final invoice.

I've worked with enough Communications Directors to know that this process is one of the most frustrating professional experiences they describe. Not because the end result is always bad. But because the journey feels like being a passenger in a vehicle you're paying for, without knowing the route.

This post is a transparent account of how I manage projects at Socialectric. Every stage, every decision point, what I do, and what I need from you. If you're considering working with me, read this first. It will either confirm we're a good fit or save us both a wasted call.

Before Anything Starts: The Discovery Call

Every project begins with a 30-minute discovery call. The purpose is straightforward: I need to understand your situation well enough to tell you honestly whether I can help, what that help would look like, and roughly what the timeline involves.

I ask about four things: your budget and who holds the decision-making authority, what's not working with your current site and what's prompted you to act now, your organisation's stakeholder complexity — who uses the website and for what — and your technical scope, how many pages, what functionality, whether brand guidelines exist.

I'm not trying to sell you on the call. I'm trying to work out whether your situation warrants the Blueprint Audit as a starting point, or whether you're ready to move straight into the monthly subscription. Most organisations I work with benefit from starting with the audit — it creates the strategic clarity that makes everything afterwards more efficient and more likely to succeed.

How Projects Are Structured

Every engagement follows one of two paths, depending on your organisation's complexity.

For most established NGOs — those with multiple stakeholder groups, Board oversight, governance pressure, or significant organisational transitions underway — the engagement begins with a Blueprint Audit (£2,500). This is a standalone diagnostic that runs over two to three weeks. It maps your stakeholder landscape, audits your current site technically and from a content perspective, and produces a Board-ready strategic roadmap. You own the findings regardless of what happens next.

If you then choose to proceed, implementation happens through a monthly subscription at £2,500 per month. Your first two to four months focus on building the new site. After that, the subscription transitions to ongoing design, development, and optimisation work. There's no separate project fee, no proposals for each phase, no surprises. You subscribe, I start building.

For organisations with clear, straightforward needs — no significant stakeholder complexity, no Board-level reporting requirements, no major platform migration — the subscription can begin directly without the audit. I'll be honest on the discovery call about which path makes sense for your situation. I won't push the audit if the simpler route is the right answer.

Stage 1: Onboarding

Once a contract is signed, the first thing I send is an onboarding document. This covers two things simultaneously: the practical logistics — access credentials for your existing site, brand assets, domain registrar login, any existing analytics accounts — and the strategic context questions that inform the work.

The strategic questions draw on what you shared in the discovery call but go deeper. I ask about your organisation's history and trajectory, how website decisions have been made previously, what the Board's level of visibility is, what content exists and what needs to be created, who manages the site after launch, and what success looks like at six months. For Blueprint Audit projects, these written answers are the foundation for the stakeholder interviews that follow.

I ask clients to return the onboarding document within five working days. This is the first indication of how the project will flow. In my experience, how quickly a client completes onboarding is a reliable signal of how smoothly feedback cycles will go throughout the engagement.

Stage 2: Stakeholder Interviews (Blueprint Audit)

For Blueprint Audit engagements, I conduct a minimum of two stakeholder interviews before any design or strategy work begins. For more complex organisations — larger teams, federated structures, significant Board involvement — I conduct three or four.

The minimum is two people, two separate calls:

The first is with the primary decision-maker — usually the Executive Director or Communications Director — for 60 minutes. I go beyond what we covered in the discovery call. I want to understand the organisation's evolution over the past three to five years, what the Board expects from digital presence, what feedback you've received from donors or beneficiaries about the current site, how content decisions get made internally, and what would make this project a failure in your eyes. That last question is the most important one I ask.

The second is with a secondary stakeholder — typically a Programmes Director or Development Director — for 45 minutes. Their perspective on the website is usually quite different from the decision-maker's, and that gap is where the most useful strategic insight lives. If a Programmes Director tells me beneficiaries frequently call to ask questions the website should answer, and the Communications Director hasn't mentioned this, that's a stakeholder alignment problem that needs to be resolved before the site is built, not after.

I also push to access a Board representative when the organisation is in a significant transition, the budget is above £15k, or the Board has expressed active concerns about the website. Board input at this stage prevents costly revisions later.

After the interviews, I identify where stakeholder perspectives align and — more importantly — where they diverge. The gaps between what different people believe the website should do are usually the root cause of why the current site isn't working. The Blueprint Audit report, delivered as a PDF, maps these gaps explicitly and proposes a path forward that stakeholders can agree on before any pixels are placed.

Stage 3: Art Direction

Before any design work starts, I establish the visual direction. For Blueprint Audit engagements, art direction follows the audit — informed by the strategic findings. For direct-to-subscription engagements, it's one of the first things we tackle.

I send clients a structured set of prompts covering both aesthetic style and tone. On the aesthetic side, I present distinct categories — modern minimal, corporate professional, editorial, warm humanist, bold and campaigning — and ask clients to select up to three that feel representative of how their organisation wants to be perceived. On the tone side, I ask whether the site should feel serious and authoritative, warm and approachable, bold and campaigning, or calm and trustworthy.

Asking clients to choose three rather than one is deliberate. It gives me room to find the common ground between their selections and make a considered design recommendation, rather than simply executing a single instruction. This is my job — to translate what you know about your organisation into a visual direction that communicates it to the audiences who don't know you yet.

From those choices, I build a moodboard in Figma. This is a working reference document, not a deliverable in itself. It brings together reference sites, colour direction, typography combinations, and photographic style. The client reviews and approves the moodboard before design begins. If the existing brand assets are strong and the direction is clear, this stage moves quickly.

Stage 4: Design

Design runs for two to six weeks depending on project complexity. A smaller site with clear brand guidelines and a straightforward stakeholder structure moves faster. A larger site with multiple stakeholder pathways, more pages, and brand development requirements takes longer.

I work in Figma. When key design stages are complete — typically the homepage, a core interior page template, and any specialist pages like programme listings or donation flows — I record a screen recording walking through what I've built and why I've made the decisions I've made. I send this to the client rather than scheduling a call.

This is intentional. Many of my clients are in different time zones, and scheduling a call creates friction that slows momentum. A screen recording lets you watch the walkthrough at a time that works for you, pause it, rewatch sections, and come back with specific, considered feedback rather than on-the-spot reactions. It also means there's a record of every decision made and the reasoning behind it.

I ask for feedback within 48 hours where possible. This is the most important expectation I set with every client. Design projects stall when feedback cycles extend from days to weeks. When that happens, I have to move to other client work to keep my practice running, and re-entry into your project takes time that wouldn't have been needed if the feedback had arrived promptly. I raise this not to be transactional, but because the clients who understand it upfront consistently have better project experiences than those who don't.

Stage 5: Development

Once design is approved, development begins in Webflow using the Lumos framework (v2.2.0+) for accessibility and editorial safety. Build runs two to four weeks for most projects.

I develop on a staging site within my Webflow agency workspace. The client has no live access to edit during build — this is deliberate. Partial builds with concurrent edits create errors that are time-consuming to resolve. Progress updates come via screen recordings at key milestones and email for day-to-day communication.

The shortest project I've completed was three weeks. That was the WHO Foundation's migration from WordPress to Webflow — a development-only project with no design phase, a clear brief, and an exceptionally responsive client team. Three weeks is not a realistic target for a project that includes design. For most complete projects, the initial build phase takes two to four months within the subscription.

Stage 6: Content Migration and QA

Before launch, content moves from the old site or from client-supplied documents into the new Webflow build. For smaller sites I handle migration directly. For larger sites, clients contribute to this stage — which is why content ownership and team capacity come up explicitly in the onboarding questionnaire.

QA covers the full site across devices and browsers, form testing and submission routing, accessibility checks using WAVE and Lighthouse, redirect verification for any URLs that have changed, analytics and tag manager setup, and DNS configuration. I don't launch a site that hasn't passed all of these checks.

Client sign-off before launch is email-based. I send a screen recording of the complete site walkthrough, confirm that all agreed functionality is in place, and ask for explicit written confirmation to proceed. That email is the formal go-ahead.

Stage 7: Launch and Transition to Ongoing Work

On launch day, the domain is pointed to Webflow via DNS, SSL provisions automatically, and the site goes live. For most clients, this is straightforward. For clients who have never dealt with DNS before, I walk through what's happening in a screen recording so there are no surprises.

After launch, I record a training walkthrough — specific to your site, not a generic Webflow tutorial — covering how to update the pages and collections your team will actually need to change. This goes to whoever will manage content day-to-day.

Once the site is live, the subscription transitions from build mode to ongoing work: new pages, campaign launches, performance optimisation, accessibility monitoring, CMS updates, and strategic support. This is where the subscription model shows its value — your website keeps evolving rather than becoming a static artefact that's outdated within a year.

You own the website. The hosting cost is paid directly by you to Webflow, not through me. I keep access via my agency workspace plan so I can assist with ongoing work, but the site is yours, the Webflow account is yours, and you are not dependent on me to keep it running. If you ever choose to pause or cancel the subscription, the site continues to function exactly as it is.

Most nonprofit clients I work with use either the CMS Site plan or the Business plan. I also recommend Webflow Analyse to all clients — it's built into the platform, integrates well alongside Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console, and gives you site performance data without needing to configure third-party tools from scratch.

What Clients Are Responsible For

I take on the responsibility of the technical and strategic work. But projects are collaborative, and there are things only you can provide.

You are responsible for supplying brand assets, existing content, and access credentials promptly at onboarding. You are responsible for reviewing and responding to design feedback within 48 hours wherever possible. You are responsible for the accuracy of the content that goes on the site — I can edit and structure it, but I can't verify that programme descriptions, team bios, and policy documents are current. And you are responsible for coordinating internal approvals, particularly for organisations where multiple people need to sign off on content or design decisions.

The projects that go smoothly are the ones where the client treats their own responsiveness as a project input, not just an organisational convenience. That's not a criticism — it's the honest reality of how collaborative work functions.

Is Socialectric the Right Fit?

I work with established nonprofits and NGOs — typically with annual budgets of £2–5 million — where the website is under governance pressure, serving multiple stakeholder groups, or in need of an infrastructure approach rather than a cosmetic refresh.

I don't take every project. If your budget, scope, and organisational context aren't a match, I'll tell you on the discovery call. If they are, the process above is what working together looks like.

If you're at the stage of thinking seriously about a website project, the most useful first step is a Blueprint Audit. It costs £2,500 and takes two to three weeks, producing a Board-ready strategic roadmap before any implementation commitment is made. If your situation is more straightforward, we can discuss starting the subscription directly.

Learn more about the Blueprint Audit →

Related resources:

• What to Expect During a Blueprint Audit: A Walkthrough for Nonprofit Communications Directors
• How to Prepare Your Nonprofit Website to Go Live
• Why Your NGO Website Is a Governance Problem, Not a Design Problem