Blog
Articles on digital, AI and growth from 1968 Consulting, written from client work rather than theory.
72 articles
How to run a charity tech tender to Charity Commission standards
A short, practical guide to running a charity technology or website tender that is fair, transparent and defensible, and gets you value for donated money.
Buying a website: the five questions that save you from spending twice
Five checks that stop you buying the wrong website build. Drawn from years of website projects across legal, financial, charity and agency work.
Your website is probably fine
Ask an agency if you need a new website and you already know the answer. Why the redesign reflex wastes money, and what to check before you rebuild.
Process before technology: why 'which tool should we buy?' is the wrong first question
The most common question about technology is the wrong one to start with. Why you should fix the process first, then fit the tool, and spend once.
Why agencies grow faster than they can deliver, and how to fix it
The trap almost every growing agency hits: sales outrun delivery, margins slip, clients wobble. What breaks as you scale, and the discipline that fixes it.
The cheapest bid is the most expensive decision on the table
Picking on price is not prudence, it is deferred cost. Why the money saved at selection gets spent twice in delivery, and how to score value instead.
AI for small businesses: what is worth it and what is just expensive noise
A plain, hype-free filter for AI spend, for small business owners without a technical team. How to tell the useful tools from the expensive noise.
Why accessibility is a governance issue, not a design extra
Accessibility gets treated as a design preference and priced as an optional extra. For most boards it is a legal duty with nobody's name against it.
Is your charity's agency marking its own homework?
When an agency's monthly report is rosier than the real data. How charities can check the reports they're sent, and the questions to ask.
Nobody needs a digital transformation
Transformation is a budget, not a plan. What organisations actually need is specific problems fixed in a sensible order, which is harder to sell.
When your own staff call the website 'frustrating', listen
The research a firm skips before a website rebuild is the research that should decide it. What staff, branches and clients reveal that design never will.
When a fractional digital leader is the right answer
Fractional leadership suits a narrow set of circumstances. Here are the signals that point to it, and the ones that point somewhere else.
The questions to ask before your firm buys legal AI
Legal AI is being pitched hard. A plain set of questions to separate the tools worth buying from the expensive noise, before your firm commits.
A review with no actions is an invoice
Consultancy's most reliable product is the report nobody acts on. What a review actually owes you, and how to tell paper from progress.
The hidden cost in your agency's pitch process
The money in a small agency leaks in the pitch, not the creative. How tightening the proposal process cut one agency's proposal time in half.
Why AI multiplies judgement rather than replacing it
AI has removed the production constraint from a lot of work. It has not removed the constraint that mattered, which was knowing what was worth producing.
The charity digital spend checklist: questions to answer before you commit a penny
A plain checklist for trustees and charity leaders. The questions to answer before spending on a website, system or agency, so you spend once.
Your agency's monthly report is a sales document
The people you pay should never be the only people measuring their own work. Why agency reports flatter, and the one change that fixes it.
The website metric that is quietly flattering your numbers
How a single mis-attributed referral can make a website look five times better than it is, and how to catch the same trick in your own analytics.
The hidden cost of vendor-led advice
The advice you get is shaped by what the adviser sells. That is not dishonesty. It is structure, and it costs organisations more than any single bad decision.
How to run a law firm website project without wasting money
A practical order for running a law firm website project: understand the site, brief it properly, then choose an agency. How to avoid an expensive mistake.
The consultant who tells you what not to buy
Most digital advice quietly pushes you to spend. Here is the case for the opposite: an independent consultant whose job is telling you what not to buy.
What boards should ask before approving an AI project
Six questions a board can ask about an AI proposal without understanding the technology. None of them require a technical answer.
Why technology projects fail before implementation starts
Most failed technology projects were technically fine. The decision that sank them was made months before anyone wrote a line of code.
A digital strategy that fits on one page and a small budget
A digital strategy is just clear decisions about what to do, what to skip and in what order. How SMEs build one on a small budget, without the big agency bill.
The boring AI wins that actually save SMEs money
Skip the hype. The AI worth having for a small business takes dull, repetitive admin off your plate, saving hours every week for a few pounds a month.
Why your website gets visitors but not customers
Traffic that doesn't convert isn't a traffic problem. Sharper pages, clearer calls to action and a working enquiry path turn visitors into enquiries.
Your customers are dropping out somewhere. Here’s how to find where
Losing customers between interested and paid? Map the customer journey, spot the leaks and recover sales you've already paid to win, without more traffic.
The £1500 audit that finds money you’re already leaving on the table
Most SMEs cannot say which digital spend makes money and which wastes it. What a focused audit finds, and what it typically pays back.
The Covid digital scramble
20 of the 55 businesses I audited pivoted digitally during Covid. Most of those emergency solutions were still running unchanged two years later. Sound familiar?
Google Analytics was installed but nobody looked at it
32 out of 55 businesses I audited had Google Analytics on their website but weren't using it. Here's the four things to check monthly that take ten minutes.
“Our web developer disappeared”
11 of the 55 businesses I audited had a broken relationship with their web developer. Here's how to make sure you're never stranded if yours walks away.
What 55 audits taught me
Two years, 55 businesses, 728 pages of reports. The patterns that showed up again and again, and why small firms struggle with digital.
The first question I always ask
Before checking page speeds or meta descriptions, I ask the same question: what does this business actually need digital to do? The answer is almost never what the owner thinks.
Why I always look at the competition
Competitor analysis was part of 32 out of 55 audits. Most businesses had never systematically looked at what their competitors do online. Here's why it's one of the most useful things I do.
Two websites, one mission
An ethical recruitment firm had two websites for two audiences. Double the maintenance, double the problems. Here's why one good site with clear navigation beats two mediocre ones.
From networking group to the United Nations
A professional networking group for women in a male-dominated industry grew into an international organisation. The digital platform was still designed for local meetups.
The workshop that changes lives
A woodturner running commercial manufacturing alongside training for veterans and people with mental health difficulties. A website that needed to serve both. And a content strategy nobody expected.
Not every digital problem is about websites
One of the 55 businesses I audited employed hundreds of people. They didn't need marketing help. They needed to replicate the creative accidents that happen when people work in the same room.
The instrument maker targeting Japan
A manufacturer moving production back to the UK. A cult following in Japan. Products costing thousands. The digital challenge: building an e-commerce experience worthy of the product.
The company that was already winning
One of the 55 businesses I audited had grown from 8m to 30m turnover and was already number one nationally. They wanted an Amazon-style customer journey. Here's what that taught me.
When the website IS the business
For some businesses I audited, the website wasn't a marketing channel. It was the entire business. Here's what changes when every page speed issue costs you actual revenue.
Digital on a charity budget
Six of the 55 businesses I audited were charities. Same digital problems as everyone else, fraction of the budget. Here's what works when free is the only option.
Creative businesses, creative problems
Photographers, illustrators, theatre companies, designers. The irony: their work is stunning and their digital strategy is nonexistent. Findings from auditing creative businesses across 55 digital audits.
When manufacturers go digital
Seven of the 55 businesses I audited were manufacturers. Their digital problems weren't about social media. They were about stock systems held together with spreadsheets and quoting processes that involved printing PDFs.
Your homepage is about your customer, not your company
\"Founded in 2015, we are a leading provider of...\" I read some version of that sentence on the homepage of nearly every business I audited. 35 out of 55 | 1968 Consulting
The case study your business hasn’t written yet
20 out of 55 businesses I audited were sitting on brilliant client stories they'd never written up. Here's a three-part structure that takes 30 minutes and works every time.
Social media strategy for businesses that don’t have a marketing team
37 out of 55 businesses I audited had social media problems. Most were posting without a plan. Here's what actually worked for the ones that got it right.
From spreadsheet to CRM: a small business guide to making the switch
38 out of 55 businesses I audited ran their client relationships from spreadsheets. Here's when to switch, what to switch to and how to do it without losing an afternoon.
SEO for small businesses: the quick wins that take an afternoon and last for years
42 of 55 businesses I audited had basic SEO problems. Missing meta descriptions, generic titles, no heading structure. All fixable in an afternoon.
The mobile usability gap: why 64% of small business websites still fail on phones
35 of 55 businesses I audited had mobile problems. Buttons too small to tap, text needing pinch zoom, menus that collapsed on themselves.
How to challenge your agency without falling out with them
A practical playbook for marketing leads whose agency report keeps showing green arrows. How to push back constructively without losing the relationship.
AI Mode is coming. Here is what brands should be doing now – part 3
Google is positioning AI Mode as a replacement for search as we know it. What is worth doing now, and what is just anxiety dressed as strategy.
Why B2B businesses should look at their desktop search data differently – part 2
Most SEO advice is written with smartphones in mind. That's understandable — mobile accounts for the majority of global search volume, most industry | 1968 Consulting
Your organic rankings are fine. So why are clicks falling? part 1
Something strange has been happening in search over the past year or so, and it is showing up in client conversations more often than almost anything | 1968 Consulting
Give the unsuccessful agencies a feedback call
Half a day of structured feedback calls to the agencies that didn't win your RFP. Why it matters and how to do it well.
A pitch day is for probing the gaps, not for repeating the brief
Three agencies, forty five minutes each, eight hours. How to use pitch day to probe the gaps rather than hear the RFP read back to you.
Most law firm websites get rebuilt because nobody could write the brief
Projects that overrun and disappoint usually share one thing. Nobody wrote the brief before briefing the agency. What to write instead.
Why your contract should have the RFP response stapled to it
How attaching the agency's RFP response to the contract stops scope arguments six months into the build. A few hours of work, years of value.
Five things that show up in nearly every law firm digital audit
Five problems that show up in almost every law firm digital audit, with a quick self check for each. For marketing leads without audit budget.
Why your CMS choice matters less than your agency choice
WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore, Umbraco. The platform debate matters less than most people think. The agency that builds on it matters more.
The RFP is the work
Most marketing leads treat the RFP as a formality at the end of discovery. It is the document that proves you know what you actually want.
The four things people actually do on a law firm website
Services, sectors, lawyer bios, contact details. The four things clients actually use a law firm website for, in priority order.
Why the insights section on your law firm website probably isn’t worth what you’re spending on it
One firm had 2,631 indexed insights pages driving one per cent of traffic. A close look at whether that investment pays for itself.
How to read eleven RFP responses without losing your mind
Eleven agencies. Eight working days. The scoring matrix that lets you read every response with the same eye and end up with a defensible shortlist.
What counts as a lead? Most law firm marketing reports can’t tell you
Why your agency report and Google Analytics disagree on lead numbers, and how to fix it. A working definition for marketing leads at mid size UK law firms.
Non-Executive Directors can really help agencies
The boards of UK companies are populated by 6,000 Non-Executive Directors (NEDs). So, it’s no wonder that many smaller business owners turn to hiring part | 1968 Consulting
when your digital strategy fails – how do you recover?
What do you do when your website is not delivering the results you want/expect - a review of your online presence will shed light on any issues
7 Ways Agency Audits Can Help You
Many digital agencies are born out of either a creative or technical (development) lead owner/manager. Whilst in the early days this works - the | 1968 Consulting
Agency Audit: Expectations vs. Reality
What is an agency audit, what should you expect, how will it help, what will you learn. A quick 5 minute read.
What happened when the consultant stopped helping…
...and the agency didn't deliver the brief We took on a project the autumn of 2013 acting as web strategy consultants/web project managers for a business | 1968 Consulting
Digital Skills; how far can outsourcing go?
Outsourcing as strategy Companies increasingly outsource specialist services and logistics; Accounting, HR, Delivery, server hosting, advertising etc. The | 1968 Consulting
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