How we built it.
From nothing to a launched site
We built the first ZoChey site. Structure, design, content and launch, starting from a blank page and a box of cards.
The brief was playful and confident. Bold primary colors, the games front and center, and room to add the next one. A company with one product and more coming needs a site that does not have to be rebuilt when the second one arrives.
The build we started, then abandoned
It began as an Elementor build. That was the right first instinct: Elementor is fast, and for a founder who will eventually want to change her own copy, it is often the correct answer.
Partway into design it stopped being the correct answer. The interactions and features Zorina wanted were not going to work inside it without fighting the tool the whole way. So we moved the build onto a custom theme instead.
We would rather change our minds in week three than deliver something compromised in week ten. The tool serves the project, and when it stops serving the project you change the tool.
Brand voice, and the files behind it
We set a consistent voice across the site and the social channels: warm, playful, confident. The same voice a family would hear if they met Zorina in person, because that is the actual product.
We also do the unglamorous half. Production-ready graphics, and help getting the game instruction documents into a state where a parent can read them once and start playing.
The part nobody is paying us for
ZoChey sells on Shopify. We did not build that, we do not run it, and we do not bill for it. We advise on it anyway.
She gets a marketing partner rather than a vendor: someone to think out loud with about retail relationships, about how the storefront and the site should hand off to each other, about which decisions matter and which ones do not. When a founder is doing this for the first time, having somewhere to take the question is worth more than any single deliverable.
We host the site and make changes when she needs them. She has never had to wonder who to call.
