Studies
Meridian Consulting
A consulting firm’s site built around credibility rather than decoration.
The brief
A study. Meridian is not a real firm. It was built to work on the hardest brief in the category: a professional-services site where there is no product to show.
Consultancies sell judgement. There is nothing to photograph and nothing to demo, which is why so many of these sites collapse into stock imagery of handshakes and sentences that could belong to any firm in the world.
The constraints
- Nothing to display. No product shots, no interface, no gallery.
- The visitor is assessing risk, not browsing. Someone considering a consultancy is asking whether these people are credible and whether this will be a mistake.
- Symmetry reads as generic. The centred-hero, three-column-services layout is so common it signals template before a word is read.
The decisions
An asymmetric hero with the numbers alongside
Rather than a centred headline over a photograph, the opening pairs the positioning statement with a sidebar of firm figures. It reads as a document rather than a poster, which is the correct register for the audience.
What it costs: asymmetric layouts need more care at every breakpoint than a centred column does.
Credibility gets its own structure
A credentials strip, named people rather than an anonymous "our team", and an FAQ that answers the awkward questions — cost, timelines, how engagements actually run. In this category the FAQ is not a support page, it is the objection-handling section, and it belongs on the homepage.
What it costs: a firm has to be willing to answer those questions in public. The ones that won't are telling you something.
The form asks what the enquiry is about
A consultation request rather than a generic contact box, because a professional-services enquiry that arrives with context can be answered properly, and one that says "hi, interested" cannot.
What it costs: every additional field loses some submissions. The ones it loses are largely the ones that were never going to convert.
Built with
- Hand-written HTML & CSS
- CSS grid
- Native details/summary FAQ
- Cloudflare Pages
