Illinois Humanities Website Proposal

Nov 30th, 2022

DB+

Dear Illinois Humanities Team,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a proposal to reimagine your website from the ground up! Based on the information you provided in the RFP, we are confident that we will be able to deliver an effective, interactive website that helps tell your story with our easy-to-use WordPress framework and visual editor.

In this proposal, we’ve included case studies, bios of our leadership team, our approach, and a detailed description of our process for redesigning ilhumanities.org.

Thank you for your consideration!

Braden Katz,
Managing Partner, Head of Product & Design

DB+

WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT?

We build sites that empower admins & content editors to easily publish new marketing and content initiatives.

We are an end-to-end partner from design and development, to website launch, hosting, and proactive support.

Our WordPress framework empowers us to build powerful solutions while keeping costs low. You aren’t getting locked into proprietary platforms.

AN EASY-TO-USE Visual Editor and Layout Library to Scale Your Marketing Initiatives

Our WordPress framework is designed for non-technical team members to scale their publishing efforts:

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Edit content, change images and tweak designs directly in the browser using a live visual editor.

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Save and reuse everything, from entire page layouts to individual modules, to streamline the publishing process.

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Break down silos between marketing, design and web development.

End-to-end, Design, Development, Hosting, & Proactive Support

As an end-to-end WordPress design, development and enterprise hosting company, you’ll get hands-on guidance and high-touch support from discovery to launch and beyond. Once your site goes live, our expert team handles all the technical details, freeing you to focus on content and growth

We Focus on Your Business Objectives

We deliver business and organizational growth, not flashiness or vanity metrics.

We Use Agile Methodologies

We use an adaptive project structure that evolves as we collaborate with your team to create the best end-product.

We Only Use Resources You Need

Unlike large agencies, we only deploy the resources you need. No meetings with 15 billable people.

WordPress Wins

WordPress empowers us to build out incredible solutions while keeping costs low. You aren’t getting locked into proprietary platforms.

Advanced Functionality Without the COST

Drag & Drop Templates

Lead Form Management

Advanced CRM Integrations

E-Commerce

Dynamic Content

Membership Sites

Intranets

Publishing Workflows

Mobile Optimization

Trusted by venture-backed startups, leading financial firms and Fortune 500s

Leadership Team

Braden Katz

Managing Partner, Head of Product & Design

Braden is a lead UX, UI, & Web designer, content strategist and WordPress expert who has worked in a wide range of industries from venture-backed startups in the telemedicine, fintech and cryptocurrency space, to established construction, real estate, architecture firms and Fortune 500 companies. His work has received awards and nominations by well-known design organizations like Awwwards.com, and design patents for its novelty. As creative director and head of product, Braden acts as the creative lead for all projects at ScaleWP and heads the design and development of the ScaleWP platform.

Scott Shorter

Managing Partner & Chief Web Strategist

Scott has been building websites and leading successful digital initiatives since the earlier days of the web. Before starting his own firm and eventually partnering with Braden on a wide range of enterprise-level projects from large online universities and multinational companies, Scott helped develop one of the earliest online membership and syndication programs for internationally known comic strips that was distributed through The Washington Post, AOL, Yahoo, and USA Today. Scott oversees all ScaleWP accounts and projects and helps combine digital marketing strategy with WordPress development.

Case Studies

A Financial Services Firm with Over $100B in Assets Under Management

A Global Fortune 500 Holdings Company

An Online-Focused University with 1700 Employees

An Established Construction Firm in Kansas City

A Growing Software Development Company

A Nationally Recognized Architecture Firm

A Full-Suite Commercial Real Estate Firm

A Cryptocurrency Mining Company Scheduled to IPO

References

Please let us know if you’d like us to share their contact information.

Brad Werner

VP Human Resources

Greg Thiessen

Chief Technology Officer

Thane Chastain

Director of Virtual Learning and Engagement

Whitney Anderson

Vice President of Marketing and Administration

DISCOVERY, CONTENT STRATEGY, BRANDING & STYLE GUIDES

The Discovery phase is key to defining timelines, milestones and a broad idea of the deliverables needed to accomplish your business goals. Here is what we’ll do:

We’ll begin with several calls or in-person meetings with key stakeholders in which we will dive into your project.
We’ll define broad design deliverables and functionality.
We’ll create low fidelity wireframes that can be accessed directly in a web browser that will give broad layout and content strategy direction. These pages will be used for writing new content that will be added to redesigned pages.
We’ll develop initial branding elements and style guides that will be used as a guide throughout the life of the project.

ITERATIVE DESIGN SPRINTS AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

We implement agile methodologies so that the end-product evolves as we collaborate with your team. During our initial design and development sprints, we’ll do the following:

We’ll define key pain points that exist within your current web systems and publishing flow, and begin jotting down ideas to solve them through design and WordPress development.
We’ll begin diving into the details of the broad functionality goals that we defined during discovery.
We’ll begin pulling in different parts of our validated WordPress framework that will be used as a base for creating key functionality.
We’ll create high-fidelity designs for key pages to quickly iterate to a well-defined user experience and content strategy in Figma.

PRIMARY WORDPRESS DEVELOPMENT SPRINT

Once prototypes and branding style guides are approved during the design sprint, we’ll move on to a primary development sprint in which we begin building key functionality and implementing approved designs and content across all pages.

Use approved prototypes and branding style guides to build out primary and internal pages across the site.
Define any design modules that need to be globally synced. This empowers your team to update important modules like call to action sections across the entire website in a few clicks.
Begin the initial buildout of key functionalities like CRM & API integrations among many others.
Go through several revision rounds until you land on exactly what you need.

ENTERPRISE HOSTING SETUP, WEBSITE LAUNCH, TRAINING AND PROACTIVE SUPPORT INTEGRATION

After the site has been rigorously tested and approved, we’ll get started on the following:

We’ll spin up an AWS instance or Digital Ocean droplet on our platform that is capable of scaling to millions of unique monthly users.
We’ll begin integrating all server health and uptime notifications into our Slack channel that is monitored by our team 24/7.
We’ll set up hourly backups that are stored for up two weeks.
You’ll get a dedicated site and account manager who knows everything about your website and will lead your support moving forward.
This site manager will handle your website maintenance and perform core and plugin updates by hand in a dedicated staging environment to ensure your website never skips a beat.