Terms
The Wonder Jam is "a family of brands who help entrepreneurs grow in a way that is soulful, shrewd, and spirited", in the immortal words of Daft Punk, harder, better, faster and stronger. One of the brands, Wonderly, builds websites with visual branding, as well as software for membership to help clients "set their own mark". I spoke with the managing associate Allie Lehman and developer Matt Hart for more information.
Fine art to freelance for the freedom of
"My roots are in the fine arts; I spent my childhood taking part in a lot 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 and graphic designer'' when I had no idea which of those terms were! I decided to go with graphic design, and took it up in college."
Allie left during the recession in 2009 and went into Web Hosting Support. "It was a bit stressful however, I did learn a lot about hosting servers, how WordPress was installed, and all things 'website'," she remembers. "In 2013 I founded The Wonder Jam, now The Wonder Jam is our parent company. I quit my design job and started that full time."
She had been collaborating along with Matt Hart for a couple years by this point; Matt Hart would create websites and she would create them. In the end they began to work together regularly: "We've been working together for over 10 years, at first as freelancers. The collaboration was organic. Now we focus on businesses that provide services and building WordPress sites," Allie adds.
Matt begins: "I do primarily WordPress development. It was self-taught at the beginning of the decade. Many those who had a chance to enter the WordPress world, it was like, 'We need to do CSS in order to make the theme have the right color scheme'. It got very boring very fast!" he smiles. When page builders like Beaver Builder and Elementor came into play, they gained flexibility: "We could do things with a custom approach which really suited the unique needs of our clients, and we were able to satisfy us with our creativity."
From the very beginning of their collaboration, Allie and Matt have concentrated on "going to custom in a way which is cost-effective" according to Matt states: "We do only what our customers want, and not anything our clients wouldn't. This is something that our clients are concerned about. They do not want to be like a mystery. They'd like to feel confident. With these tools, let us achieve that."
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Allie continues: "In 2013, I started The Wonder Jam with my husband. We had started by freelancing for myself as a freelancer on my own. We also had Matt as Developer Contractor. We were looking to get work done, we wanted to pursue what we wanted to do, and desired this freedom." That's how the Wonder Jam was born.
Soil, support and systems
"We are from Columbus, Ohio and it's an open and welcoming neighborhood for small businesses," she continues. "Matt would visit the city from Seattle and we would begin working with local clients; we'd walk along the streets downtown, and check out all the different businesses we've worked with." The year is 2020. after seven years of The Wonder Jam and as the company began to grow nationwide, they became the parent company, which now has three brands that are sister brands.
Wonderly concentrates on businesses that provide services, including authors, nonprofits chef's and fitness instructors. It also owns a brand called Basis that focuses on the retail industry and people selling products, as well as a brand called Studio Wonder, an events area and photography studio situated in Columbus.
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Three brands that allow for the greatest amount of creative freedom: "It allows our team to be focused on the things they desire to achieve and to have their own processes," Allie says. "Because Matt and I started collaborating from the beginning and have over more than a decade of process that we have mastered. I have images from 2017, of us drawing whiteboards on each of our processes so that our clients feel really guided.
"The Wonder Jam operates as the 'soil' to provide the things every small business requires to be able to go in the background Each sister brand can'sprout according to its own style and does whatever it can with opportunities that arise. That lets all of the paths be clear and be free of obstacles that can make it hard to run a one- or two-person enterprise," Matt continues. "We have a variety of businesses that are able to work in tandem."
For example, the Basis brand offers primarily Shopify and online shopping, however, occasionally the client wants to start blogging and wants to offer something stronger than the one Shopify offers. Therefore, Wonderly comes in to provide advice to the Basis client on processes related to WordPress. "We are able to support and interact with one another and work as a unit, even though everyone gets to specialize in a way which is satisfying for them," he smiles.
"The Wonder Jam sits as a supportive foundation; no-one is in charge of in deciding who we should work with or how much revenue to generate - that's dependent on the managing partner," says Allie. They share the resources of software and projects management software and client concierge. Each managing partner is able to reserve a project. Team members are able to join the project and manage every aspect of back-end administrative tasks such as invoicing and contracts.
"It allows people such as Matt and me focus on the work," Allie smiles. "I consider that we've created a great working environment; the key is to make certain that our customers have excellent satisfaction. 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 procedure."
Matt says: "We say we don't make designs for you. We create with you. We're not going off for a couple of months and create something on our own. We get together often and show them how we work from beginning to end, rather than going away to our creative spaces and creating things on our own!"
Contexts and clients
Matt and Allie work with a lot of different organizations that need their website to be accessible in many different ways. "Some of our customers are non-profits. These are really robust sites. They're often too complex, or they've been around for a long time. Therefore, we tend to consolidate or condensing so the site can be simpler," Matt explains.
"We're in contact with those 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. It's common for us to work with those who've put a ton of their own energy, time and money into their businesses," she adds.
Wonder Jam Wonder Jam brands work with anyone, from large-scale organizations to solo entrepreneurs that are transitioning into full-time work from their side business. "We've tried to build systems that can accommodate both. We're learning what scales well as well as what needs to think about differently in cases where the scale is dramatically different. This is a lot of fun to work out!" Matt laughs.
He adds "With non-profit organizations, they typically have something established and they've been able to figure out all the legal hoops to cross. This is often how we make it work, because we're not looking to create a new wheel." The group will reframe the experience, and find what context might motivate someone to give, and make the donation process easier.
At the beginning of the partnership and with every single client regardless of the type of business or the nature of the site, The Wonder Jam team talks about the concept of customer experience. "A site can be an instrument that's efficient in making a purchase, but it could also help in attracting clients returning, or acting as useful. We usually ask, 'Is it a resource? Or could it help in encouraging VIPs?' who are the most important individuals to small businesses," Allie explains.
Matt and Allie agree that a website can't be all things to everyone and it's crucial to plan it out. "Whenever we're doing a membership site, the number one factor we're considering is getting customers to return to use it all the time and feel like it's the best value they've ever received," Matt adds.
Case studies: Simi and Molly
Allie says: "One of our clients, Simi Botic, has an exercise community as well as a the membership is called Unmeasured and is centered around body movement, called"the Barre Method. She has such a compassionate perspective of 'Just get moving instead of looking to "punish" your body. There are a variety of choices based on your flexibility."
When Simi first joined Wonderly, she had only a handful of videos on the site and would be switched once a week. "It allows for things to be more organized and allows her to combine what's possible with her schedule," Allie confirms. "After about two to three years, we expanded the members' list, which gives her the ability to offer greater value to the people she serves, which is amazing. We are thrilled that we're capable of changing our approach when clients' goals change; we're simply reassessing our design, making some minor changes before implement them in the development."
Another customer, Molly Baz, wanted to move from her current platform and move to something that would be more branded and more interactive. "Her visual branding is so vibrant and exclusive to her. She wanted her viewers to feel 'live' in that style They received recipes, updates as well as the exact type of content that they were familiar with however in a manner that felt authentic and very specific to her character," Allie explains.
We've all heard that Molly's network has become important to her. "To get the website in a way which is consistent to her aesthetic - changing the website from 'Oh yeah there's a photo of Molly - go buy the cookbook' to something more significant, both inside and outside of the membership, brings a lot of value," Allie muses.
"Something we've tried to accomplish with each of our customers is to think about the things that it will be the experience for them if we're not talking to them all day. We make sure they have good systems in place to be able to use the tool that we've made specifically for them. Molly's experience was an excellent instance of that." Matt agrees.
Further information, as well as future plans
Matt and Allie have been working with companies and sites that require "a large amount of accessibility" to accommodate users with disabilities. "We're cooperating with truly amazing organisations that work hard in order to get these websites as well as prototypes, which are approved by this group of people."
They agree, in general, they've been very lucky when it comes to their clients "It's been amazing to just keep working with truly good individuals. Our clients are really thoughtful people and we always are respected and appreciated," Allie concludes. "We get to work with really interesting people with values that guide their job. It's a great feeling being able to create products that they can enjoy," Matt smiles.
Learn more regarding Allie Lehman and Matt Hart and their team, and think about working with them, at thewonderjam.com or withwonderly.com.