Crucial Networking: 15 Years of Client Results

I co-founded Crucial Networking in 2002 and ran it through 2017, building web, brand, and ecommerce platforms for businesses large and small. Each engagement started with the same two questions: how does this business actually make money, and how can the website help more of it happen?

ROLE
Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer

COMPANY
Crucial Networking

TIMEFRAME
2002-2017

SCOPE
Digital strategy, brand and web design, ecommerce development, and conversion optimization

TEAM
Founding team of three, team size varied by engagement

I started Crucial in 2002 with two partners. Over the next decade we grew to a core team of five and built our own content management system, which ran hundreds of client sites. By 2012 keeping that CMS secure was costing more than it gave our clients, so we moved all new work to WordPress and left stable sites where they were.

After 2011 we changed how we staffed. We stopped adding headcount and built a bench of specialists we trusted, pulling them in project by project: a copywriter in Canada, a design team in Romania and developers wherever the work called for them. That let a small firm take on bigger engagements without carrying overhead between them. We also worked behind the scenes as the build partner for agencies like Mintz & Hoke, fitting into their process and their deadlines. Coding standards that I put in place held that model together. Every project got formatted and commented the same way, so a developer new to a given account could drop in and be productive the same day.

All three partners ran client accounts. On top of that, I:

• Wrote proposals and pitched new business
• Managed and mentored our designers and developers
• Built a discovery, design and development process we could repeat as we scaled
• Built production documents and standards for the design process itself, a low-fi design system years before the term existed
• Created the new business discovery process we used with every prospect

I built that discovery process to do two jobs. The first was finding the real unmet needs behind what a client asked for. The second was moving us out of the commoditized “web designer” category. Most prospects arrived comparing quotes. Discovery showed them how we could add value to their business before we ever sent a proposal, and that changed what we were competing on. Each session built on the one before it, ending in a solution presentation that was really the proposal. By then most prospects had already felt the value firsthand, so the number rarely came as a shock. Our average project grew from about $2,000 to about $15,000 once we put it in place.

• Aetna Feds
• Hartford HealthCare
• Fifth Third Bancorp
• Reader’s Digest
• American Cancer Society
• Mintz & Hoke
• Chicago Academy of Sciences

Nine engagements from those 15 years, each measured by what it did for the client’s business.

Reddy Raw, Inc., a $100MM+ frozen food distributor with more than 70 years in business, needed to modernize how it took orders without losing the sales relationships built over decades.

Built and launched an ecommerce platform for a personal and commercial lines insurance carrier, live and generating revenue since December 2014.

A specialty insurance carrier moved manual enrollment down to 35% of all new business after the platform went live.

An administrative tool I built for Pearlman Buying Group, now part of CECOP USA, let members manage their accounts and pay bills online.

Natalie Martin website launch – $2M+ in online sales and growing

Launched the ecommerce site for fashion designer Natalie Martin, then grew revenue another 76%, traffic 51%, and time-on-site 24% over the following 18 months

Built a custom event management system for a retail business, replacing the manual work of managing bookings by hand.

Built the ecommerce and membership platform for author Natalia Rose, adding five-figure recurring revenue through a custom-built membership community.

Candlebox – multi-platinum rock band – website design

Rebuilt the fan engagement platform for multi-platinum rock band Candlebox, reviving their mailing list within months after nearly a decade of inactivity.

Repositioning a boutique yoga studio to fully book itself through its website alone.

Repositioned the brand and website for a therapeutic yoga studio owner, growing her client base through conversion optimization and local SEO.