Clarify - Productised Elements¶
The Model¶
- Discovery stays the indivisible sellable unit - and every build carries a floor. Clarify tiers are named presets that configure the research half of a Discovery engagement; Architect's equivalent presets configure the definition half (Architect productisation). Clients buy Discovery; sales pick a tier for each half from one menu instead of scoping from scratch. Separately, build projects sold without a Discovery include the Clarify Baseline - required, not purchasable, not removable - so no MAJOR project is built blind. Two routes, one floor.
- One audit kit, three skins. The audit kit is a single chassis
with five strands - UX, content, technical/platform,
accessibility & performance, and brand. It is packaged three ways:
- Website audit and roadmap (gateway product): UX + content + technical + performance strands, plus a prioritised roadmap.
- Brand health audit (gateway product): brand strand (+ content strand), plus recommendations.
- Clarify step 1.3 (in-process): strands per tier/band, feeding the Keystone. One asset, three revenue routes - and a client who bought either audit walks into Discovery with 1.3 partially banked.
- Pricing: fixed for the lower tiers. Focused and Core are fixed-price products with an estimated time-box and a defined deliverable (the Keystone). Full is scoped bespoke - XL contexts vary too much to fix.
Tier Matrix¶
The chapter README's tier table defines what each step includes at each tier, with bounds, upgrade triggers, and what feeds Architect. The longer per-step tier files are kept as reference. The matrix below is the commercial view.
Focused is deliberately a truly light model (see the chapter README § How Clarify Runs); conflict or market stakes are upgrade triggers, not absorbed work.
Per-step inclusions live in the tier reference and price-card.md; the commercial rows:
| Focused | Core | Full | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time-box | 2–4 weeks | 4–8 weeks | 8+ weeks |
| Price (Clarify component) | £4,295 + VAT fixed | £13,500 + VAT fixed | From £25,000 + VAT, typically £25k–£40k |
Notes:
- 1.5 is never optional at any tier - the Keystone is the deliverable that defines the engagement.
- Baseline metric capture is mandatory at every tier, including Focused.
- The tier sets the default band per step; a step can still be banded up individually where the context demands it (that delta is priced, which keeps the fixed price honest).
Naming¶
Tier names are Focused / Core / Full - alliterative, plain English, escalating, and collision-free. One tier vocabulary travels through the whole Discovery phase, on two axes: Clarify's tier is set by research depth, Architect's by site size and complexity, and a Discovery can mix them (Focused Clarify + Core Architect). The two halves price independently as a clean sum and the higher tier names the engagement - see Architect productisation for the composed Discovery SKUs. Touchstone §11's Discovery tiers match this ladder, and its gateway products share it.
Prices¶
These are the Clarify component of a Discovery price, not the Discovery price itself; the composition rules (§ Naming, above) and the full menu live in Architect productisation § Discovery prices.
| Tier | Price (Clarify component) | Market evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Clarify Baseline | £2,000 + VAT on every S build sold without a Discovery | Not sold separately, not removable - the priced floor beneath the ladder. |
| Focused | £4,295 + VAT fixed | Priced below Box UK's £5,000 anchor for a single fixed UX audit - while bundling the questionnaire pair, measured strands, light UX, content inventory, analytics review, a three-competitor glance, and the Keystone with playback. "Less than the price of one audit elsewhere." Productised economics: selling instruments and the Keystone, not hours. Moved from £5,000 so the Focused pair composes to the £9,995 price point without a bundle discount; the anchor still frames it, now from below. |
| Core | £13,500 + VAT fixed | Sum-of-parts at published UK prices: UX audit £5k + accessibility £4,950 + mid-size SEO audit £2.5–7.5k + a workshop £1.8–5k = £14k–£22k before interviews - Core stays below the stack's floor, so "cheaper than buying the parts" holds. Under Design Sprint Ltd's ~£20–24k; top of Make It Clear's £5–15k band. |
| Full | From £25,000 + VAT; quote per engagement, typically £25k–£40k | GOV.UK discoveries run 4–8 weeks at ~£20k–£80k; agency research studies $15k–$75k+, multi-market $100k+. Floor raised from £20k - the research's explicit warning was under-anchoring this tier. |
Prices are validated against the internal cost model in effort-model.md (internal, never client-facing); only the external price appears anywhere a client might see.
Selling notes (from the market evidence):
- Sell the stack, not the hours. Core's sales weapon is sum-of-parts: bought separately, the audits alone reach £12k–£17k at published UK prices before a single interview or workshop. Nobody publishing fixed prices mentions hour counts; they sell deliverables, turnaround, and ROI.
- Fixed price pairs with explicit scope: the deliverables list and the time-box (2–4 / 4–8 weeks) appear next to the price, always. That is what every successful fixed-price productiser found does.
- "+ VAT" always stated (house style anyway; also the universal B2B convention in the evidence).
- Charm pricing (£3,950) was considered - the market leader AbilityNet uses it - but clean round numbers match the refined, no-gimmicks voice. Revisit only if Focused's sign-off friction proves real.
- Nothing in the evidence says any tier is over-priced; the risk runs the other way - under-anchoring Full. There is documented headroom to move Core toward £15k later without leaving the evidence band.
Full source list in the market research (Honcho £1,800 workshop; morphsites from £5,000 discovery; Make It Clear £5–15k sprints; Design Sprint Ltd $25–30k; Box UK £5,000 fixed UX audit; AbilityNet £4,950; UK SEO audit guides £2.5k–£25k; GOV.UK/Local Digital discovery norms; discovery-as-10–25%-of-build heuristics).
What This Unlocks¶
- A sales menu for Discovery instead of bespoke research scoping.
- Fixed-price lower tiers are a direct answer to the custom-quote-only competitive field: nobody in the Storyblok space publishes fixed research products.