Strategy

Before we choose technology, design or functionality, we want two things:

What does this have to deliver? And who are we building it for?

A new site or shop is not a goal in itself. It has to change something: more enquiries, more revenue, fewer drop-offs, a higher average order, less manual work, or customers who find what they need faster. If we do not know that, we may build something good-looking. We will have a hard time telling whether it is also the right thing.

First we work out what has to get better

“Our website is dated” is a good reason to start the conversation. It is not a goal. We make it more concrete.

• More qualified leads.Not necessarily more forms. More enquiries from companies you actually want to work with.
• More online revenue.That can mean more visitors. It can equally mean better conversion, a higher order value or customers who come back more often.
• Less manual work.A shop also earns money when prices, stock, customers and orders move between systems automatically.
• A better customer experience.Letting people find, compare, order or get in touch faster.
• A new sales channel.Sometimes a site or shop has to make possible something your business does not do digitally at all today.

The more concrete the goal, the easier it becomes later to decide what we do and do not build.

Who are we building for?

“Our customer” is rarely one person. In B2B, one person looks for information, a second compares, a third approves internally and someone else places the order. In e-commerce, new and returning customers often need completely different things.

So we look at the different people who need something from your site or shop, and at what they are trying to get done. Not to write three-page personas that then disappear into a folder. To be able to make decisions.

Which information should come first? Which filters matter? What does someone need to know before they get in touch? Where do people drop off today?

First we look at what you already know

Before we commission new research, we look at the information your business already has.

• Analytics.Which pages get visited? Where do visitors arrive? Where do they leave? Which channels bring people who also convert?
• Search behaviour.What do people type into search on your current site? What are they looking for that they apparently do not find on their own?
• Sales data.Which products, categories and customers generate revenue? What gets bought together? Where are the repeat purchases?
• Customer service.Which questions keep arriving by phone or email? A good website can prevent some of them.
• CRM and sales.Which leads become customers and which do not? What does sales keep having to explain?

Often a fair part of the strategy is already sitting in that data. Nobody has looked at it together yet.

We look at competitors to learn something

A competitor analysis is not, for us, a collection of screenshots. We mainly look at what other companies let their visitors do.

Which information do they show? How is their catalogue built? Which filters do they use? Do they show stock? How does their checkout work? Which information do they ask for a quote? How quickly do you reach the right product?

And at least as interesting: what do they all do the same way? That can be a proven pattern. It can also be the place where you do something better.

Being found is changing

For years, being found mainly meant Google. That stays important. The field is getting wider. People increasingly ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other AI assistants before they visit a website, and search engines themselves increasingly show an answer before anyone clicks through.

A website still has to be technically indexable. Information also has to be clear, structured and understandable for systems that assemble an answer. So we look not only at classic SEO, but also at whether a search engine or an AI system actually understands who you are, what you do and why you are relevant.

Growth goes deeper into SEO, findability and how we follow that up after go-live.

Only then do we choose technology

Our rule is simple: use the most standard product that solves your problem well.

What you need	Where we usually land
A website around content, expertise and lead generation	WordPress WordPress
A shop with a catalogue, checkout and orders	Magento 2 + Hyvä Magento and Hyvä
B2B commerce with customer-specific prices, permissions and ERP logic	Magento 2 + Hyvä B2B commerce
A small specific process where SaaS is too large or too expensive	Tiny product Tiny products
A strategic process that does not fit existing software	Your own platform Platforms

Those are our preferences, not laws of nature. The interesting question is always: how much do we have to rebuild a standard product before it stops being a standard product?

A few modules and configurations are normal. But if we have to bend the data model, the order process or the idea of a customer fundamentally to fit your business into it, we may be using the wrong foundation.

And if Shopify is the right answer?

Then we say so. We do not build Shopify shops ourselves. That does not make Shopify a bad product.

For relatively standard B2C commerce, SaaS can be exactly the right choice: live quickly, a lot of functionality available, and a large part of the technical responsibility sitting with the vendor. Magento gets more interesting when commerce gets more complex: customer-specific prices, large catalogues, several sales models, deeper ERP integrations, unusual order flows or other logic that sits at the centre of how you sell.

We do not turn a problem Shopify solves perfectly into a Magento project. The reverse applies too.

Sometimes the best new website is a smaller website

A redesign tends to take everything that exists today along again. That is not always needed. Pages nobody visits. Functionality barely used. Content that was relevant five years ago. A navigation structure that mainly reflects your internal organisation.

A new web project is also a chance to leave things out. Fewer pages, fewer templates and less functionality do not make a site less valuable. Often they make it easier to understand, cheaper to build and simpler to maintain.

What strategy delivers

Not every web project needs a separate strategy engagement. When the question is clear, we make these choices during the first conversations and the project itself. On larger or more complex work, strategy becomes part of discovery.

The result should be the same either way: we know what the project has to deliver, who we are building for, which problems we solve first and why we are using the chosen technology.

Only after that does it make sense to start designing screens. Design is the next step.

Questions we get a lot

How do you map our goals and audience? We make goals measurable and look at the different people who use your site or shop. Where possible we start from existing analytics, search data, sales data and input from sales and customer service.

Do you do competitor research? Yes, but mainly functional. We look at what competitors let their visitors do, which information they show and where you can do it better or differently.

How do you decide which technology fits us? We choose the most standard product that solves your problem well. For sites we usually land on WordPress, for more complex commerce on Magento + Hyvä. For specific processes a tiny product or a platform makes more sense.

Why Magento and not Shopify? Not every shop needs Magento. Shopify can be an excellent choice for relatively standard commerce. Magento gets more interesting when integrations, B2B, catalogue, prices and order logic get more complex.

Can you just advise us without building the site afterwards? Yes. Strategy or discovery has to be usable on its own. We want you to choose Baldwin because you want to continue with us, not because the advice only works if we execute it.

Do you take AI and new ways of searching into account? Yes. Classic SEO stays important, but people increasingly discover companies and products through AI assistants and AI results in search engines. So we also look at structure, content and technical findability from that context.

Do we always have to do a separate strategy engagement first? No. For a clear website or shop we take much of this along during the first conversations. On more complex work, strategy sits in discovery.