Grant FAQ

Will my website really be free?

Short answer: Yes. But please read on.

The cost for strategy, design, development, testing, and launch will be covered 100% by the Fuel Made Grant. However, with any website redesign there are other costs associated that you’ll need to budget and plan for on your side if your application is accepted.

Among them are:
Your team’s time to engage in the process. It will be important that someone from your team serve as our primary point of contact, and is available for extensive discovery, design discussions, and testing. You’ll also need to load all content into the new website.

A significant part of a successful website is the creation of high quality assets, this includes high end professional photography, as well as copywriting and, if needed, video content. If you do not already have this, you will need to invest several thousand dollars in creating it. We’ll help direct this effort, but the cost of producing the assets will be covered by you. This will need to be done quickly. 

All other costs will be covered by you, including Shopify platform fee, credit card fees, app fees, etc.

 

What’s the catch?

1. We will collaborate with you and rely heavily on your input. Our discovery and strategy workshops include a deep dive into your existing data, customers, product information, and competitive landscape. Together, we'll define the site's goals and land on a site redesign strategy. However, we will retain creative control over the final website. In other words, we’ll have final say on what it looks like, and how it flows and functions.

We’re very confident that any reasonable brand will be over the moon and love what we do, but it's important for this effort that we're able to ensure our hard work will yield the desired outcome.

2. You will need to be willing to let us share this project as a case study on our website, email newsletter, social media, and other outlets, including sharing some growth numbers. Our goal is to put your ecommerce store on a path to strong growth, and we want to use your project to showcase our growth model and the impact it has. We'll be sharing what we did, and what the impact was.

 

How much time will be required from my team?

You will need to have a single point of contact with decision-making ability ready and available to collaborate with our team. This person will need to be super cooperative, and commit to fully engaging with us on a daily basis to do your part to make this work in a timely fashion (we'll be moving quickly). We’ll need 2-5 hours per week of your time for our work for approximately 8-10 weeks starting in late June 2019. For the first half of the project you’ll be involved nearly daily, toward the second half you’ll be engaged 1-2 times per week.

You’ll also need to dedicate time to loading content, configuring and integrating with third parties if needed, and managing asset creation.

  

Which of your services will I be receiving?

• Strategy, data analysis, conversion rate optimization
• Design / Branding / UX
• Development (we’ll be building a fully custom Shopify theme)
• Post-launch data monitoring and reporting for 6 months

What criteria will you be using to select the winner of this award?

We are looking for brands who meet the following criteria:

• You are a digitally native brand, selling your own branded products. 
• You have a fairly low product count. 
• You have exceptionally good assets (photography and copy) or are willing to properly invest in creating them, with our direction.
• We'll need to be confident that we can really move the needle for you (we'll review your data, and interview final candidates to be sure).
• You’ll need to be willing to implement customer-centric policies like friendly, clear shipping and return policies.
• You must be on Shopify, or willing to move to Shopify.
• You must have someone on your team available to run point, and be available (nearly) daily throughout the process. We will be moving quickly and will need someone capable, informed, and able to make decisions on your team who is just as involved as we are.
• Because our approach is a data-informed approach, we are looking for a brand averaging at least 30,000 visitors per month (or who is on track to get there very soon), with at least one year of history.