A professional-services site, live in 48 hours

Jon needed a clean, credible site he could manage himself, built fast and on a budget. We evaluated CMS platforms, prepared the assets and built a working site in two days.

Project at a glance

• Industry: Professional services Cross-border commercialisation and market-entry advisory for C-suite leaders.

• Platform: Typedream A user-friendly, low-cost CMS chosen to fit the budget and self-management needs.

• Scope: Build & launch Platform selection, asset prep, copy, build, forms and training.

• Result: Live in 48 hours The full project ran from start to finish in under two days.

1. Introduction

Jonathan Cox is a seasoned expert in cross-border commercialisation and market entry strategies. He has over twenty years of experience launching western brands in China. After 50+ Cross-border eCommerce launches, Jon has developed a process to represent and/or guide C-suite executives and high-level business leaders to overcome the complexities of global expansion.

[Above: Jonathan with Alibaba Founder Jack Ma, 2019]

I had the privilege of working under Jonathan as an account manager at QBID. Between 2016-2018, we built several companies into multimillion-dollar Cross-Border eCommerce businesses - including Trilogy Organic Skincare.

2. Planning

2i) Exploring CMS Platforms

To find the best CMS platform, I evaluated several options and presented them to Jon.

• WordPress, though free, is not user-friendly and requires additional costs for web hosting and SSL certificates (roughly $60-$100 per year).

• Wix and Squarespace were also considered but were pricier, starting around AU$30/month.

• Webflow was ruled out, as it’s not user friendly enough

• Meanwhile

• Finally, I found Typedream, which offered a user-friendly, AI-driven CMS for just US$15/month (AU$22).

2ii) Preparing Design Assets

The next challenge was preparing all the design assets - easily the most time-consuming task. This involved cropping images to the right size or using generative AI to expand them if they were too small. I then exported them to the appropriate sizes and compressed them to avoid loading lags.

3. Building Phase

3i) Rapid MVP

Adopting a lean approach, I asked Jonathan to provide two reference websites he liked. Using the content from these references, I built an MVP draft with the color palette of his Hong Kong business, Stratforms. I populated it with Jonathan’s imagery and shared the design in the Typedream staging environment for a feel of both desktop and mobile experiences.

3ii) Content Refinement

The major challenge was verbalising Jonathan's value to attract C-Suite business executives seeking to expand internationally. I evaluated his internal documents and used them to build the content. For every line of text, I had a professional sales-trained GPT provide five alternative lines for evaluation.

3iii) Revision and Final Update

Fortunately, Jonathan was happy with the design concept upfront, so minimal changes were needed. I focused on learning Typedream's approach to mobile responsiveness, ensuring all CTAs worked, and maintaining design consistency throughout the site.

3iv) Going Live

Once Jonathan made the payment, I configured everything via GoDaddy DNS and pushed the site live.

3v) Form Configuration

With the site live at joncox.co, the final step was configuring form submissions to automatically send to Jonathan's email. Using a free Zapier account, I set up the Typedream form to leverage Zapier’s native email system, ensuring any form submission triggered an email to Jonathan's inbox.

3.vi Training

After the site went live, we had a call where I showed Jonathan how to navigate and manage the Typedream CMS. I also configured myself as an additional seat on his plan for convenient future updates.

The website joncox.co is now live, and Jonathan is thrilled with the result. All in all, the entire project took less than two days to complete from start to finish.

4. Outcomes

The website joncox.co is now live, and Jonathan is thrilled with the result. All in all, the entire project took less than two days to complete from start to finish.