Terms
Wonder Jam Wonder Jam is "a family of brands who help small, creative businesses to grow" In the words immortalized by Daft Punk, harder, better, faster and stronger. One of those brand names, Wonderly, builds websites as well as visual branding tools and Membership software that helps its customers "set them apart". I spoke to managing associate Allie Lehman and developer Matt Hart to learn more.
Fine art and freelance work to freedom
"My background is in the fine arts. I grew up performing lots of drawing and oil painting," starts Allie Lehman. "At high school I had a fantastic art teacher who, funnily enough, suggested that I could become an illustrator or graphic designer'' even knowing nothing about which of those terms were! I decided to go with graphic design, and went to college to study it."
Allie left during the recession in 2009 and was employed in Web Hosting Support. "It was a bit stressful but I learned a lot about hosting servers, the process of how WordPress was installed, and every aspect of a website's design," she remembers. "In 2013, I started The Wonder Jam, now our parent company. I quit my job as a designer and began working full-time for the company."
She was working with Matt Hart for a couple years at this point. Matt Hart would create websites and she would create them. After that, they started working together much more often: "We've been working together for over 10 years, both initially as freelancers. It was a natural collaboration. We now focus on service-based businesses building WordPress websites." Allie adds.
Matt begins: "I do primarily WordPress development. It was self-taught in the early 2010s. A lot of users who were navigating the WordPress world and were thinking, 'We need to do CSS in order to make the theme use the correct color scheme'. It was very dull very quickly!" he smiles. With the introduction of page builders such as Beaver Builder and Elementor came in, they gained some versatility: "We could do things using a customized approach that really targeted the specific requirements of our customers, and really satisfied us creatively."
Since the beginning of their collaboration, Allie and Matt have focused on "going customized in a manner that's affordable", as Matt says: "We do only what the clients want and don't do what our clients don't. This is something that our clients care about: they don't want this to feel like a mystery. They want to feel empowered. With these tools, let us do that."
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Allie continues: "In 2013, I started The Wonder Jam with my husband, after freelancing for myself as a freelancer on my own. We were fortunate to have Matt as an developer contractor. We had a desire to work. we were looking to be able to create our own thing, we were looking for this freedom." That's how the Wonder Jam was born.
Soil, support and systems
"We are from Columbus, Ohio and it's a really welcoming open area for small business," she continues. "Matt visited on his way to Seattle and we started working with local clients; we'd stroll down the streets downtown, and check out all the different businesses that we've collaborated with." In the year 2020, following seven years with The Wonder Jam and as the company began to grow nationwide, they became the company's parent, and now have three sister brands.
Wonderly concentrates on businesses that provide services, including authors, nonprofits, chefs and fitness instructors. It also owns a brand called Basis, focusing on retailers as well as people who sell products along with a different brand called Studio Wonder, an events location and photography studio located situated in Columbus.
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The three brands offer an abundance of creativity flexibility: "It allows our team to focus on the things they would like to accomplish and to have the ability to develop their own procedures," Allie says. "Because Matt and I started collaboration from the very beginning in the year 2000, we've got more than a decade of process under our belt. I have photos from 2017 showing us whiteboarding every step of our process, to ensure that our clients are really guided.
"The Wonder Jam operates as the "soil" that provides the things every small business needs to have going in the background, then each sister brand gets to 'sprout' in its own way and gets to do its thing with the possibilities that come up. That lets all of the routes be clearly defined and without a hiccup caused by factors that make it hard to run as a two or one-person enterprise," Matt continues. "We are a group of companies which can work together."
The Basis brand focuses on Shopify as well as e-commerce. However, sometimes there's a client that wants to start blogging and wants to do something that's better than the services Shopify can offer. So Wonderly will come in and provide advice to the Basis client on processes related to WordPress. "We can support and collaborate with each other and feel like a team, even though everyone gets to specialize in a way that feels satisfying to them," he smiles.
"The Wonder Jam sits as an unifying foundation. Nobody is in charge of giving us advice on who to collaborate with or how much revenue to earn - it's all entirely up to the managing partner," continues Allie. The brands have shared tools like software, system for managing projects and client concierge. The management partners are able to reserve a project. Team members are able to onboard the project and handle all the backend admin like invoicing and contracts.
"It allows people such as Matt as well as myself be focused on what they do," Allie smiles. "I think we've created the perfect working environment. this is all about making sure that our customers enjoy great experience. When they contact us via email and feel that they're receiving a timely response and feel that they're being at ease throughout the entire process."
Matt is in agreement: "We say we don't make designs for you. We create in partnership with you. We're not going off for a couple of months to create something for them. We meet a lot and let them see how we work from beginning to end, rather than leaving to our crafty caves and making things all on our own!"
Clients and contexts
Matt and Allie have worked with many of organisations that require the website to be accessible in lots of different ways. "Some of our clients are not-for-profit organizations. These are very robust sites. They're often too complex, or they've existed for quite some time. So we are usually consolidating or condensing the sites so they could be more simple," Matt explains.
"We're as well working with individuals who are looking for membership websites, such as people from the food business," Allie continues. Wonderly's clients tend to be people who do human-service-oriented work: "They're fighting for equality, they're looking to talk to their audience a little differently. Our clients tend to be individuals who've invested lots of their own enthusiasm, their time, and money in their venture," she adds.
The Wonder Jam brands work with anyone, from large-scale nonprofits to single-person entrepreneurs that are transitioning into full-time work from their side business. "We've attempted to create systems that can accommodate the requirements of each. We're learning what scales well as well as what needs to consider differently when the scale is drastically different. That stuff's really fun to discover!" Matt laughs.
The author adds that "With charities, they generally have an established structure and have been able to figure out all the legal hoops they had to cross. This is often how we make it feasible, since we're not trying to make a fresh start." The group can reframe the situation and determine what kind of context could make someone donate and smooth out that process.
In the beginning of our partnership and with each client regardless of the type of business and the scope of the site, The Wonder Jam team talks about the concept of customer experience. "A website can be a tool that's really good at getting a first sale, or it can be really good at getting returning customers, or being an asset. The question we usually ask is: "Is this an asset, or is it capable of creating VIPs?' those who are considered to be the most crucial customers to small-scale businesses," Allie explains.
Matt and Allie both agree that websites shouldn't try to be everything to everyone and it's crucial to be strategic. "Whenever we're doing a membership site The most important factor we're considering is that we want customers to return be able to utilize it every time and believe that it's the best value they've ever experienced," Matt adds.
Case research: Simi and Molly
Allie says: "One of our clients, Simi Botic, has an exercise community and participation in Unmeasured and is centered around body movement, called the Barre Method. She has such a compassionate perspective of 'Just get moving' and not looking to "punish" your body. There are a variety of choices based on your flexibility."
When Simi first joined Wonderly there was a small number of videos on the site and could be changed once per week. "It makes things be more organized and allows her to combine what's feasible with her time schedule," Allie confirms. "After around two or three years of operation, we increased the members' list, which gives her the opportunity to provide more to her audience and that's amazing. We're thrilled to be capable of changing our approach when clients' goals change; it's just a matter of re-evaluating the design, making some minor changes before implementing that in development."
Another customer, Molly Baz, wanted to transition from her existing platform to one that could be more branded and more immersive. "Her brand's visual identity is vibrant and exclusive to her. She wanted her audience to feel 'live' in that style They received recipes, updates, and all the kind of content that they were used to however in a manner that felt authentic and really specific to her personality," Allie explains.
We all know that Molly's network has become important to her. "To be able to put it in a structure which is consistent with the rest of her style - shifting the website from 'Oh yeah that's an image of Molly Go buy her cookbook' into something very significant, both inside and out of the membership. It adds many benefits," Allie muses.
"Something we've been trying to do with our clients is think about the things that it will be similar for them when we don't talk to them all day. We ensure that they have good systems in place for them to utilize our tool we've created to them. Molly's experience was an excellent example of that," Matt agrees.
More information and future projects
Matt and Allie are currently working largely with sites and companies that require "a massive lens of accessibility" for customers who are disabled. "We're working with really amazing organizations who work in order to get these websites and their prototypes recognized by these groups of people."
In general they've enjoyed a great experience with their clients "It's incredible to keep working with truly good individuals. Our clients are really sensitive and they always have a sense of respect," Allie concludes. "We are fortunate to collaborate with really fascinating people whose values drive their job. It feels good to be able to make stuff that is for them," Matt smiles.
Find out more information on Allie Lehman and Matt Hart as well as their team and think about collaboration with them at thewonderjam.com and withwonderly.com.