Compass
Project Vision
What Compass is, who it’s for, and how we sell it. Updated 6/10/26
Service lines (delivery layer)
18
Grid categories (17 public)
Skill sheets complete
Agents in production
Open questions
What is Compass?

Compass is Northwoods’ branded approach to continuous website improvement.

Compass gives organizations an affordable and scalable way to keep websites healthy, compliant, secure, discoverable, and effective over time. A Compass engagement can start with a free but limited assessment / scan to find and highlight key risks and opportunities. Prospects become clients when they engage Northwoods for a full assessment, expert consultation, and recurring support.

With a Compass retainer, Northwoods provides continuous monitoring, reporting, prioritization, and remediation across SEO, accessibility, privacy and consent, security, uptime, analytics, performance, and UX.  Updates are pushed to a Compass Dashboard. 

Compass gives clients access to a private digital operations department -- without the cost or complexity of building one internally.

Service Tiers — F / S / M / L
F — Free / Quick

Fast, agent-automated scan. Prospect enters URL, gets immediate results. Email capture for follow-up.

S — Paid Deeper

Thorough report with remediation plan the client can self-execute. A few hundred dollars.

M — Audit & Consult

Full audit + live 1–2 hr expert walkthrough. Explains findings, effort, and priority.

L — Retainer

Ongoing: recurring scans, dashboard KPIs, monthly reviews, client-elected remediation budget.

L-Tier Remediation Budget Model

Deficiency found in scans and audits produce prioritized sets of recommendations. At the retainer level, the client elects a monthly budget for Northwoods to remediate findings on their behalf. The client and their AD agree on priority order — which items get addressed first. Included retainer hours are applied against the remediation backlog each month, based in part on the value provided, with progress tracked on the client dashboard. This is the core value loop: scan → find → prioritize → fix → measure → repeat.

Ideal Client Profile

Any firm with a non-trivial digital presence, that recognizes the importance of a healthy, compliant, secure, discoverable, and effective website but lacks the resources or expertise to maintain it themselves.


Best fit
  • Non-profits
  • Government / municipal
  • Healthcare
  • Mid-market B2B
  • Education
  • Associations
Less ideal
  • Orgs under $500K revenue
  • Enterprise (40M+) with full internal IT departments
Q2 Goal: Land the first Compass client by June 30, 2026. The first sale does not require the client portal to be live — baseline assessment is delivered manually by AD + SMEs (PDF + call).
Dashboard Client Flow
How clients arrive in the Compass portal — and how the experience changes by entry point and by what they’ve paid for. This section precedes Two Portals and will likely reshape it.
Reconciliation 2026-07-07 (these decisions win over older text): Landing pages are per grid category, not per service — 18 categories, 17 public landing pages (Titan is internal-only); read "service landing page" below as "category landing page." Wave 1 = Visibility, Conversions, Analytics, Content, AI Readiness, Paid Media + the first-touch portal view. Scoring is 0–100 banded Red/Yellow/Green everywhere. Auth is magic link only. Tiers are F/S/M/L with M = Audit & Consult. Full decision log: dashboard-client-flow.md §0.
The portal is a status & dashboard hub — not the deliverable. Compass is a home base for checking status, seeing updates, viewing the services you’ve signed up for, account status, and client profile information, plus a light dashboard view across services. The deep, custom reports are tailored per service line and usually live off-portal as per-service microsites.
Two Views: Free & Paid
Free View Free
Audience: Anyone with an account who has saved a free scan
  • Teasers for every service line in the catalog
  • Purpose: discover, sample, convert
  • Teasers can trigger another free scan inline
  • Deliberately not overwhelming
Paid View Paid
Audience: A client who has paid for one or more service lines
  • Everything in the Free view, plus…
  • Richer links + widgets for the paid service line(s)
  • Purpose: track, view, act on what you bought
  • Per-service widgets — TBD next
Three Ways In
EP1 · Category Landing Page → Free Scan Free view
A prospect lands on a category landing page (e.g. Privacy, Visibility) via a promotion and runs a free scan.
  1. Lands on the service landing page through a promotion.
  2. Runs a free scan and sees the results.
  3. We offer to save the scan to the portal — to return to and share.
  4. Creates an account via magic link (no password).
  5. Clicking the link shows the scan as a portal-native summary card.
Share = a read-only link to the same view. Service teasers can trigger another free scan inline.
Lands in: First-touch / simplified
EP2 · Returning Client → Full Report Paid view
A client with results returns and engages us for the curated, expert-driven full report.
  1. Requests a full report.
  2. Pays — credit-card-first, processed & recorded, service enabled. Invoice-by-phone is the alternative (creates the account + relationship).
  3. Portal acknowledges: Requested → Submitted → In Review → Results Ready.
  4. An in-house expert curates the scan (hours-to-a-day) and pushes results back.
  5. A link appears — usually out to a custom, per-service microsite.
Lands in: Status / in-progress → Results ready
EP3 · Direct Arrival (cold) Free view
Someone lands on the portal directly, not via a category landing page.
  1. Arrives cold — no prior scan, no referral.
  2. Portal shows service teasers and invites a free scan.
  3. “Yes, free scan” → link out to the landing/scan page, then back into the portal.
  4. Scan-first; magic-link account created only once there’s something to save.
Linking out is a placeholder to avoid duplicate content. Best long-term flow is a team discussion.
Lands in: Discovery / cold entry (converges with EP1)
Portal States
State Trigger View What the client sees
Discovery / cold entry Direct arrival (EP3) Free Teasers + invite; CTAs link out to landing/scan pages
First-touch / simplified Saved a free scan (EP1) Free Their scan summary card + teasers (inline re-scan enabled)
Status / in-progress Requested a full report (EP2) Paid Request acknowledged + status (Requested → … → Results Ready)
Results ready Expert pushed results (EP2) Paid Link out to the per-service microsite deliverable
Ongoing / retainer later Engaged at L tier Paid Recurring dashboards, KPIs, remediation progress
Superuser proxy Northwoods staff “view-as” Internal Whatever the impersonated client would see
Shared Building Blocks
Teaser anatomy + progressive disclosure

Every category has a teaser: brief description, a peek at its dashboard, a peek at the full report, and what you get at each F / S / M / L tier. Revealed via expandable cards — not dumped all at once.

Auth evolution

Magic link first (created when there’s something to save). Later: optional name + password account to use in lieu of the magic link.

Payment

Credit-card-first, processed and recorded in-flow, enabling the paid service immediately. Invoice-by-phone is the relationship-building alternative.

Per-service microsites

Full reports are tailored per service line and don’t share one template yet — expect a microsite per service, linked from the portal rather than rendered inline.

Superuser / proxy view

A credentialed Northwoods employee can switch into any client account and see exactly what that client sees. Scope (this section vs. AD Portal) is still open.

Direction: This section precedes Two Portals, which stays in place for now. The hunch is that “Two Portals” evolves into a Public Portal section with each view enumerated as a card — so the flow can be seen. Next step: build prototypes of each view (Free discovery, Free first-touch, Paid status, Paid results-ready, the teaser card, and the superuser proxy shell).
Two Portals superseded
Compass requires two separate tools — one for clients, one for Account Directors
Superseded 2026-07-07 by the Dashboard Client Flow section above. The client portal is one adaptive shell with Free/Paid views and entry states (EP1/EP2/EP3) — not the fixed multi-module dashboard described below. This section is retained as a module inventory reference (the module list still informs what paid widgets could exist per category) and for the AD Portal half, which remains valid and lives in Phase 5 of the plan.
Client Portal Prototype exists
Audience: Clients — external access via magic link
  • Homepage performance module (Lighthouse, speed, page size)
  • SEO health module
  • Mobile health module
  • Security module
  • Uptime dashboard (configurable time periods)
  • CMP & Accessibility scores
  • Baseline inventory (pages, images, forms, 404s)
  • AI-generated recommendations
  • Auth: Magic link (email, no password)
View prototype →
AD Portal Prototype exists
Audience: Account Directors (ADs) — internal, VPN-only
  • Per-client, per-month deliverable checklist
  • Hours tracking: allocated vs. used
  • completedBy field: human / agent / both
  • Client-sync toggle (controls what clients see)
  • All ADs have access; no separate auth (VPN sufficient)
  • Data feeds the client portal in real time
Why this matters: The AD portal is the internal accountability engine. If we’re not tracking deliveries, we can’t guarantee we’re delivering what we sell.
View prototype →
Service Catalog
All Compass services with owner, cadence, and skill sheet status
Service Category Owner Cadence Skill Sheet Service Page
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Agent Development
Claude AI agents being built by Northwoods specialists
Agent Service Owner Status Deployed To Notes Updated
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YouTube / Blog Topics
Patrick’s content plan — 1–2 min tips covering each Compass service domain
Type Title Service Status Notes
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ROI Framework
Baseline → target → measured delta. One KPI per service. Agreed at kickoff, reported monthly.
How this works: At kickoff, the AD and SMEs capture baseline metrics for every active service. Targets are agreed with the client. Every monthly report shows the delta. The retainer renews because clients can see the numbers moving.
Cross-Service KPIs

These are the business outcomes the buyer cares about. Every service feeds at least one of these.

Per-Service KPIs

Click any service to expand baseline captures and BDM talking point.

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