Ben McIntyre, the CEO of Mersey Raw, reached out for a free website audit. Mersey Raw started in a kitchen and is now stocked in 36 stores across the UK, which tells you most of what you need to know about how he works.
I could have sent him a report. Instead I drove to Liverpool.
A PDF Is Not a Conversation
An audit document is a list of things that are wrong. It is genuinely useful, and it is also completely inert. It does not tell you which of those things the business can actually act on this quarter, which ones are symptoms of something bigger, or what the founder is quietly worried about at 11pm.
You only get that by sitting across a table. So we sat down and went through website optimisation, SEO and content, customer engagement, and where the real ecommerce growth might come from. No walking around the problem. Just the honest picture of what is working, what is not, and what to do about it.
Why the Free Audit Is Where We Start
At MageCloud, a free site audit is how most of our client relationships begin. We check everything and give a straight, actionable plan rather than vague recommendations. It works because it puts our judgement on display before anyone has signed anything.
It also filters properly. A founder who engages seriously with an honest audit is a founder who will engage seriously with the work. A founder who wanted a document to file away was never going to be a good fit.
I have made the same argument about pitching. Skip the polished deck and send a Loom. Show them your thinking, not your design skills.
The Bit That Does Not Scale, and Should Not
People tell me driving to meet a prospect does not scale. They are right. It also happens to be the reason we win. Meeting people in person changes the energy of a relationship in a way no call ever has for me.
Ben has built something out of resilience and stubbornness, and I would be glad to have Mersey Raw as a client. But the point of the trip was not to close him. It was to find out whether we would actually be good for each other, which is a question you cannot answer over email.
If you are serious about scaling your store and you want the real picture rather than a template, come and talk to me at Ecommerce Camp or ask for the audit.