A consultancy of one, on purpose

Based in Oxfordshire, iknowthe.net has been an independent practice since 2004 — long enough to have watched several certainties about the web arrive, dominate and quietly disappear.

How the work is done

You talk to the person doing the work. There is no account manager relaying questions, no junior team learning on your budget, and no monthly report designed to look busy. When something is not working, you hear it early and plainly, which is usually the difference between a small correction and an expensive one.

The six services on this site are not separate departments. They are the parts of one problem: getting the right people to your site and knowing what actually persuaded them. That is why measurement tends to come first, why paid search data so often decides what gets written for organic search, and why the site itself is treated as part of the marketing rather than a separate job.

background

Experience behind the advice

Online since 1993; consulting on internet and ecommerce projects full time since 1995.
Based in Oxfordshire and working with clients across Oxford, the Thames Valley and the rest of the UK.
Clients have ranged from businesses still in the planning stage to blue-chip brands including Amazon, MTV and Allianz.
Google Analytics and Google Ads certified, and working in both accounts weekly.
Twenty years managing WordPress and other CMS-based sites, and building fast, modern, clean websites on them.
Recent work concentrated on site review, search optimisation and conversion — improving user experience and rankings together, rather than trading one for the other.

principles

How the advice is given

The data comes before the plan

Recommendations follow from what your accounts show, not from a template. Where the data is not good enough to support a decision, that gets fixed first.

No incentive to inflate budgets

Fees are for the work. Nobody here earns more when your ad spend goes up, so the advice about spend can be taken at face value.

You keep everything

Accounts, properties, campaigns and documentation stay in your name. Handover notes are written on the assumption that one day someone else will pick this up.

Plain English throughout

Jargon usually means the explanation has not been finished. Reports are written to be understood by whoever signs them off.

“Tremendously helpful in providing insight into SEO and practical SEO strategies.”
Allianz Insurance UK

“Knows her stuff, and is a pleasure to work with.”
MTV Networks