StrataFusion

Web concepts, round one. Private review.

Prepared by Innovative Group for Ken Crafford, Greg Higham, Maureen Vavra, Lars Rabbe and Joseph Frascati. Please do not forward.

StrataFusion Review
Round one · Aug 10, 2026 · Confidential
Web plan, round one · Private review

Three phases to bring StrataFusion fully online.

Crawl, walk, run is the goal. The look-and-feel refresh the team shipped was the crawl and it reads current, so nothing here reopens it. What follows is the walk and the run: three phases that build on the existing site in sequence rather than three competing redesigns. Phase A fixes the foundation, Phase B gives Fractional 360 a home, Phase C turns the whole thing into a content and AI-answer engine. Nothing here is final. The point is to agree the sequence and get moving.

KC
Ken Crafford
GH
Greg Higham
MV
Maureen Vavra
LR
Lars Rabbe
JF
Joseph Frascati

Prepared by Innovative Group as part of the partnership. No charge attaches to this work. Please do not forward outside StrataFusion.

01 · Where this starts

What we heard, and what we did with it.

Everything in this document traces back to something said on a call. The three phases are not house styles we are fond of; they are one reading of what the partnership has asked for so far. If a direction looks wrong, the session it came from is in the log at the bottom, and we would rather change it now than after the build starts.

The constraint everyone named

A look-and-feel refresh recently shipped and the partners are invested in it. They will reasonably want to see what comes next before they nod. So every phase here is additive first, and nothing asks the partnership to throw away work it just approved.

The gap that keeps coming up

As content starts shipping from IG and StrataFusion, there is no obvious home for it on stratafusion.com and the social channel has no named owner. It has come up in most of the recent sessions. It is the first thing Phase A fixes.

What the firm actually sells

Interim and fractional leadership (CIO, CISO, CTO), cybersecurity strategy, digital strategy, AI, and private equity work, delivered through Rapid Assessment and Mobilization. A dozen partners, each with a lane. The site currently lists this; it does not yet sell it.

What the partnership adds

Fractional 360: seven coordinated chairs across both firms. Five are named. That offer does not exist anywhere on either website yet, and it is the single biggest reason to touch the site now rather than in the autumn.

02 · What the audit found

One asset is already beating BCG. The rest is speed and signals.

Agatha ran a full SEO and LLM-visibility audit on July 9. The headline is genuinely good news, and the biggest problem is a configuration issue rather than anything structural. Full report, including the fix sequence: SEO and LLM Visibility Audit (user: stratafusion / password: igstrata2026!).

The good news · already earned

StrataFusion ranks #9 on page one for "IT carve-out consulting firm", a query that fires an AI Overview and where the rest of the field is BCG, FTI, Valantic, NMS, Catalant, RKON and LEK. Getting there with one article on a domain this size is a real achievement. Domain rank is 86. Technical SEO score is a perfect 100, so the metadata and structure are clean.

Most urgent · mobile delivery speed

Mobile LCP is 7.8 seconds against a 2.5s target, INP 7.8s against 200ms, and the mobile performance score is 64 where 90+ is the threshold for AI Overview eligibility. Desktop is fine at LCP 1.9s, which proves the site can be fast. Three fixes recover more than 1.3 seconds: eliminate redirect chains (780ms), remove unused JavaScript (450ms), remove unused CSS (150ms). None of them require a rebuild.

Off-site authority · the quiet gap

Of 123 referring domains, 82 are nofollow, so roughly 41 domains are actually passing authority. Recent inbound links skew toward low-rank aggregators and syndication pickups with spam scores of 15 to 40, which read as press-release distribution rather than earned editorial links. Against BCG and Deloitte that gap matters. Clutch, G2 and named industry directories carry the most weight at this tier.

The open category · Fractional CISO

"Fractional CISO services" carries a $59.50 CPC with low competition, and StrataFusion does not rank for it. Competitors are paying real money per click for a query nobody has saturated with content. With Henry Ivey in the CISO chair, one well-structured guide could own the AI Overview in a category the generalist firms have not prioritized. This is the single clearest opportunity in the report.

Not yet ranking · the other core services

"IT transformation consulting private equity" and "digital transformation consulting" both fire AI Overviews, and EY, Deloitte, FTI and PA Consulting own that space today. No page-one presence on either yet, which is the content-cluster opportunity rather than a technical problem.

Small housekeeping, worth doing this week

A hello@example.com link and a placeholder international phone number are still live on the current site alongside the real contact details. Two minutes to fix, and the kind of thing every firm has sitting on a page nobody has scrolled in a year.

03 · Your existing brand

Everything here runs on your palette, not ours.

Pulled straight from the live Webflow stylesheet. Deep teal is the anchor, with a navy and a single blue for action. General Sans carries the body and Chillax the display type. Nothing below asks the team to rebrand, and no color is introduced that is not already on the site.

Deep teal
#0C1E21 · primary
Forest
#103E3A · surfaces
Navy
#01284F · depth
Action blue
#0082F3 · links, CTAs
Mist
#E8EDED · dividers

Type on the site today

General Sans for body and UI, Chillax for display, Roboto Mono for accents. It reads current and it is a genuinely good pairing, so the recommendation is to keep it and use it more deliberately rather than change it.

Voice on the site today

Measured, credential-led, service-oriented. "Navigating Success: Your Strategic Partner." It communicates seniority well. What it does not yet do is tell a specific story, and specifics are what both search engines and AI answer engines reward.

What the site already gets right

Clean structure and a perfect technical SEO score of 100 in the audit. The service architecture (interim and fractional leadership, cybersecurity, digital strategy, AI, private equity) maps cleanly to how buyers search. Rapid Assessment and Mobilization are real, differentiated offers.

Where the tone can stretch

Forty years of operator history is the asset no competitor can copy, and almost none of it is on the page as story. One post, the PE carve-out guide, already proves what happens when it is. That is the tone shift: from describing capability to showing the work.

Screenshots

Annotated captures of the current home page, a service page, and the mobile view drop in here, marked against the audit findings so the conversation happens on the actual pages rather than in the abstract.

04 · How to read the next three sections

Fifteen minutes, in three passes.

01

Scan the three bets

Each concept opens with a one-line bet. If one is obviously wrong for the firm, say so and we drop it now rather than building it.

02

Check the weakest-at line

Every concept has one. Read those three lines together; the trade-off between them is the actual decision.

03

Answer the five decisions

At the bottom. Five calls, most of them Ken's. Everything downstream waits on them.

05 · Phase A
A
Phase A · The site · Weeks 1-3

Fix the foundation, then say who you serve.

Start where the audit points. Recover the 1.3 seconds of mobile load time, clear the placeholder contact details, add practice-area schema, and tighten internal linking between the service pages. Then a light home-page pass so a visitor self-selects in one click: a PE firm with a portfolio company that needs help, a company mid-carve-out or transition, or a board that needs a chair filled. Same design language, same Webflow build, sharper doors.

What changes

Speed fixes, schema, internal links, contact details, and a home-page framing pass. No new design system and no migration.

Why first

Mobile at 7.8 seconds disqualifies the site from AI Overview eligibility no matter how good the content is. Everything in Phase C depends on this being fixed.

Who does it

IG does the build work as part of the partnership. Ken oversees on the SFG side with Lars Rabbe and Joseph Frascati. Effort on your side is review, not production.

The point of Phase A

Nothing else compounds until the foundation carries weight. Fast site, clean signals, and a visitor who knows within five seconds which door is theirs.

Weeks 1-3Audit-ledNo rebuildLow risk
Preview

Annotated before-and-after of the home page and one service page, plus the mobile speed comparison, drop in here once the sequence is agreed.

06 · Phase B
B
Phase B · The Fractional 360 hub · Weeks 3-5

Give the partnership a home on both sites.

A Fractional 360 hub on stratafusion.com in SFG's voice, mirroring the framing on innovativegroup.io so the two firms tell one story. Eight chairs, who holds each, how they interoperate, and the buyers who get the most from it. This is the page both firms link to, which is where the cross-linking authority actually comes from, and it is the first public evidence that the alliance exists.

What changes

One new hub page plus a nav entry, cross-links live in both directions, and Henry Ivey's CISO chair gets its own section pointed at the open Fractional CISO query.

Why second

The offer is real enough to publish now that six of the eight chairs have names, and the $59.50-CPC Fractional CISO gap is sitting open. Waiting costs the position.

Who does it

IG drafts in SFG's voice, SFG edits. Anything carrying the StrataFusion brand goes through your review before it publishes, as agreed.

The point of Phase B

The productized C-suite is the story worth owning while the large consultancies are creating category interest without holding the position. Publish the offer, fill the last chairs in public.

Weeks 3-5Joint GTMCross-link authorityCISO gap
Preview

The seven-chair module is the piece worth prototyping first. Wireframe and copy draft land here.

07 · Phase C
C
Phase C · The engine · Week 5 onward

Turn forty years of work into a machine that gets cited.

An insights section built so search engines and AI answer engines can find and quote the firm. The PE carve-out guide gets enriched with hard data and given siblings: a fractional CISO guide aimed at the open query, an IT transformation cluster for private equity, and the practice areas written as substantive content rather than service descriptions. Off-site runs alongside it: Clutch, G2 and named industry directories to fix the 67% nofollow problem.

What changes

Insights architecture, a content cluster per practice area, schema on every piece, off-site profiles, and the content calendar plugged in so it publishes on a rhythm.

Why last

Content only compounds on a fast site with somewhere to live. Phases A and B make this the part that pays, rather than the part that gets buried.

Who does it

IG runs production and the SEO and AEO machinery. SFG supplies the expertise, which is the half that cannot be outsourced. Joseph is keen to help productize.

The point of Phase C

One article already put StrataFusion on page one against BCG. The engine is what turns that from a happy accident into a repeatable position across every practice area.

Week 5+AEO + GEOContent clusterOff-site authority
Preview

Insights architecture, the first cluster map, and the fractional CISO guide outline drop in here.

08 · The recommendation

Run all three, in order. A, then B, then C.

These are not alternatives to choose between. They are one sequence, and treating them as competing options is the slowest path to something live. It also matches the crawl, walk, run approach the partnership already agreed, and it never asks anyone to discard the refresh the team just shipped.

Weeks 1-3
Phase A · The site

Speed, schema, contact details, and a clearer home page. Unlocks everything downstream and carries almost no risk.

Weeks 3-5
Phase B · The hub

Fractional 360 gets a home in SFG's voice, cross-linked with IG. First public proof the alliance exists.

Week 5+
Phase C · The engine

Insights, the content cluster, and off-site authority. Where the compounding actually happens.

One practical note. Getting something live matters more than getting the perfect thing live. The placeholder contact details and the redirect chains can be fixed this week regardless of what else is agreed, and the insights section should exist before the first post ships rather than after.

09 · What we need from you

Five decisions. Everything else is downstream.

Most of these are Ken's call, and none need a meeting. A line in Slack is enough.

1

The sequenceKen

A then B then C as laid out, or a different order. If a phase is wrong for the firm, say which and why and it comes off the table.

2

Where SFG content livesKen

Our recommendation: a new insights section on stratafusion.com, cross-linked with innovativegroup.io. The alternative is LinkedIn-only, which builds someone else's asset.

3

Social home and its ownerKen + Maureen

One named person for the SFG LinkedIn page. IG amplifies, but the account needs an owner or the cadence dies in week three.

4

MeasurementKen

Webflow already gives baseline stats so nothing is blocked. Worth standing up GA4 and Search Console together with your team when it suits, so Phase C can be measured properly.

5

Day-to-day contactLars or Joseph

One person to work directly with the IG build team, so decisions do not queue behind a weekly call.

10 · Where this came from

The record, so nobody has to remember who said what.

Every recommendation on this page traces to something said on a call or written in an email. If a decision here looks wrong, the source is below.

July 2 · working session

The offer that has no home yet

Fractional 360 named as the lane that makes the partnership visible to the market, with Greg in the CIO chair and the rest of the bench to be assembled. Nothing about it exists on either website, which is what makes the hub page urgent rather than nice to have.

July 9 · weekly sync

IG offers to help, Ken takes the baton

IG offered to refresh or rebuild the site as part of the partnership, no bill. The phase underway is content, and Ken owns the call on the SFG side. The SEO and AEO audit was shared as the starting point.

July 14 · Chris and Greg

Where does the content go?

The question this document exists to answer came up: as posts start shipping from both firms, where does StrataFusion host and post its share? The social side needs thought and a named owner. Target discussed: something live by end of August.

July 28 · Chris and Greg

Webflow, and crawl-walk-run

Confirmed the site runs on Webflow, chosen for ease of editing. Agreed the approach has to manage partner expectations, since the look-and-feel refresh recently shipped. Hence: additive first, rebuild only once the content proves itself.

July 30 · with Henry Ivey

Ken assigns the bench

Ken has Lars Rabbe and Joseph Frascati leaning into the website work alongside IG's team, effectively a tiger team on the SFG side. The exchange is straightforward: IG brings the marketing and build capacity, SFG brings the expertise back the other way.

August 10 · this document

Three concepts, one recommendation

Round one. Built by IG from the transcripts and a fresh audit of the live site, for review by Ken, Greg, Maureen, Lars, and Joseph.