Terms
Wonder Jam Wonder Jam is "a family of brands that help scrappy, soulful businesses grow" according to the immortal words of Daft Punk, harder, more efficient, quicker and stronger. One of the companies, Wonderly, builds websites with visual branding, as well as software for membership to help customers "set themselves apart". I spoke with the managing associate Allie Lehman and developer Matt Hart to find out more.
Fine art can be freelanced into freedom
"My roots are in the fine arts; I was raised doing an abundance of drawing as well as oil painting" says Allie Lehman. "At high school I had an excellent art teacher , who funny enough, said, 'You could become an illustrator and graphic designer'' though I didn't really know which of those terms were! I chose graphic design and studied it in college."
Allie graduated during the recession in 2009 and went into the support for webhosting. "It was quite stressful, but I learned lots about hosting servers, how WordPress was installed, and all things 'website'," she remembers. "In 2013 I started The Wonder Jam, now the parent company of our business. I quit my job as a designer and began working full-time for the company."
She'd been working together with Matt Hart for a couple years at this point. Matt Hart would create websites and she would develop the websites. In the end they began to work together regularly: "We've been working together since the past 10 years beginning as freelancers. Their collaboration came about naturally. Now we focus on businesses that provide services and building WordPress sites," Allie adds.
Matt begins: "I do primarily WordPress development. This was a self-taught skill in the early 2010s. A lot of users who were navigating the WordPress world, it was like"We have to create CSS so that this theme can have the right colors' and that was very dull very quickly!" he smiles. When page builders like Beaver Builder and Elementor came in, they gained some flexibilities: "We could do things in a very custom way which really suited the unique requirements of our customers, and really satisfied us creatively."
From the very beginning of their collaboration, Allie and Matt have focused on "going customized in a manner which is cost-effective" according to Matt states: "We do only what our clients need and not what our clients don't. Our clients truly are concerned about. They do not want to be like a mystery. They'd like to feel confident. By using these tools let us achieve that."
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Allie continues: "In 2013, I created The Wonder Jam with my husband after I had been freelance for myself as a freelancer on my own. We had Matt as an developer contractor. We had a desire to work. we wanted to pursue what we wanted to do, and wanted the freedom to do so." It was then that the Wonder Jam was born.
Support, soil, and systems
"We live in Columbus, Ohio and it's a really welcoming open area for small-scale businesses," she continues. "Matt would visit on his way to Seattle and we began working with local clients. we'd stroll down the street downtown and see all the different businesses we've worked with." In the year 2020, the Wonder Jam had been around for seven years. The Wonder Jam and as the company began to grow across the country, they decided to make it the company's parent, and now have three sister brands.
Wonderly concentrates on businesses that provide services, including authors, nonprofits chef's and fitness instructors. There's a sister brand named Basis that focuses on the retail industry and people selling products, as well as a brand called Studio Wonder, an events location and photography studio located within Columbus.
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These three brands allow the greatest amount of creative liberty: "It allows our team to focus on what they truly would like to accomplish as well as the ability to develop their own procedures," Allie says. "Because Matt and I started working together from the start, we have a decade of processes in our backs. I have pictures from 2017 of us whiteboarding each of our processes so that our clients feel truly guided.
"The Wonder Jam operates as the "soil" that provides all the elements that every small business needs to have going in the background Then each sister brand is able to "produce according to its own style and gets to do whatever it can with possibilities that come up. It allows each of these pathways be clear and free of obstacles that can make it hard to run a one- or two-person enterprise," Matt continues. "We are a group of companies which can work together."
The Basis brand is primarily Shopify and online shopping, however, sometimes clients want to begin blogging, and would like to create something more robust than what Shopify provides. Therefore, Wonderly can come in to help the Basis client about processes that relate to WordPress. "We can support and collaborate with each other and are a cohesive team even though each of us gets to focus on a particular area that feels satisfying to them," he smiles.
"The Wonder Jam sits as an enabling foundation. No one is in charge of giving us advice on who to collaborate with or how much profit to do - it's really up to The managing partner" continues Allie. The brands share tools like software, projects management software and customer concierge. This allows each managing partner to book a project; Team members are able to join the project and manage all the backend admin such as invoicing and contracts.
"It lets people like Matt and me focus on the work," Allie smiles. "I believe we've built the perfect working environment. this is all about making certain that our customers have excellent satisfaction. When they contact us via email we feel they're receiving a timely response and they feel guided through the process."
Matt is in agreement: "We say we don't make designs for you. We create with you. We're not going to go out for a while and create something on our own. We get together often and allow them to see the process from start to end, rather than leaving to our crafty spaces and creating things all on our own!"
Clients and contexts
Matt and Allie work with a lot of organizations who need the site to be accessible in lots of different ways. "Some of our customers are nonprofits. These are very robust sites. They're often too complex, or they've existed for quite a while. So we are usually consolidating or condensing them so that the website is simpler." Matt explains.
"We're as well working with individuals that want to join a membership site like those 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. We tend to work with individuals who've invested lots of their own passion, money and time into their businesses," she adds.
Wonder Jam Wonder Jam brands work with anyone, from large-scale non-profits to entrepreneurs with a single person who are transitioning to full-time employment from side jobs. "We've tried to build systems that can accommodate the needs of both. We're learning about what scales well, and what you need to think about differently when the scale is drastically different. It's really enjoyable to work out!" Matt laughs.
He continues "With non-profit organizations, they typically already have a foundation and they've identified all the legal hurdles they needed to go through. We'll often make this way feasible, since we don't want to necessarily make a fresh start." The group can reframe the situation and find what context might motivate someone to give, and smooth out that process.
At the beginning of the partnership and with every single client , no matter the nature of business and the scope of the site, The Wonder Jam team talks about the methodology of customer service. "A site can be a device that's good at getting a first purchase, but it could also become extremely effective at gaining regular customers or serving as an asset. The question we usually ask is: "Is it a resource? Or could it help in fostering VIPs?' - who are the most important customers to small-scale businesses," Allie explains.
Matt and Allie Both agree that websites should not try to cater for everybody and is crucial to plan it out. "Whenever we're doing a membership site, the number one factor we're considering is the desire for customers to return to use it all the time and believe that it's the most valuable experience they've ever experienced," Matt adds.
Case research: Simi and Molly
Allie begins: "One of our clients, Simi Botic, has an exercise group and a participation in Unmeasured and is centered about body movements, also known as the Barre Method. Simi has such a compassionate view of "Just move instead of seeking to punish your body. There are lots of different options depending on your mobility."
When Simi first started her journey on Wonderly, she had a small number of videos to choose from and they could be changed once per week. "It allows for things to feel curated and allows for her to pair what is feasible with her time schedule," Allie confirms. "After two or three years of operation, we increased the membership, to give her the chance to give more to her audience this is awe-inspiring. We are thrilled that we're capable of changing our approach when clients' goals change; we're just reassessing the layout, making a few minor changes before applying them to the design."
Another customer, Molly Baz, wanted to move from her current platform to one that could be more distinctive and experiential. "Her visual branding is so dynamic and so specific to her. She wanted her viewers to feel 'live' in that style with recipes and updates and the same sort of information they are used to however in a manner that felt on-brand and felt really specific to her personality," Allie explains.
We've all heard that Molly's fan base has grown to be so important to her. "To be able to put it in a structure which is consistent to her aesthetic - changing the web page from "Ooh, it's a picture of Molly Go buy her cookbook' into something very important, both within as well as outside the membership, brings a lot of value," Allie muses.
"Something we've been trying to do with all our clients is think about the things that it will be like for them when we're not talking to them every day. We ensure that they have the right systems in place for them to utilize the software we've developed for them - and Molly's experience was an excellent example of that," Matt agrees.
Further information, as well as future plans
Matt and Allie have been working with companies and sites which require "a heavy lens of accessibility" to accommodate users with disabilities. "We're cooperating with truly amazing groups who are working to have these sites and prototypes approved by this group of individuals."
The majority of them agree that, overall, they've been very lucky when it comes to their clients "It's incredible to continue to work with really good people. They are very considerate and we have a sense of respect," Allie concludes. "We are fortunate to collaborate with really interesting people who's values guide their activities. It feels good being able to create things that are for them," Matt smiles.
Learn more about Allie Lehman and Matt Hart and their team, and look into collaboration with them at thewonderjam.com or withwonderly.com.