Team Empathy · Search & AI for Ecommerce
Foundations Sprint
Scope and quote for Absolute Essential
In response to your 30 July scope · Prices in NZD, per line, on acceptance
The shape. Start Monday 3 August. All six deliverables complete and accepted by Friday 4 September, the week before I leave. Acceptance is the machine check on each line, not opinions, exactly as you set out. Everything lives in your accounts and is yours to keep.
The six lines, priced
| # | Deliverable | Price | Target | Accepted when |
|---|
| 1 | Product schema, whole catalogue | $1,500 | Fri 14 Aug | Product markup valid with no errors in Google's Rich Results test across all 226 products (name, brand, price, availability, review). GTIN markup added where barcodes are in your product data. GTIN "recommended" warnings are out of scope unless barcodes are supplied, since Google accepts brand plus SKU without one. |
| 2 | Brand and founder entity layer | $1,500 | Fri 14 Aug | Organisation and Person (Dr Bo Hendgen) markup validates, the sameAs graph is complete including LinkedIn, and the founder entity page is live. A Wikidata item is submitted. Acceptance is the submission, not Wikidata's editorial approval, which is outside anyone's control. |
| 3 | Article and FAQ schema templates | $1,000 | Fri 21 Aug | Article schema (with dateModified) and FAQ schema validate on live examples of the Encyclopedia, blog and Ask Dr Bo page types, applied template-wide so every new piece carries them automatically. |
| 4 | Unique metadata sitewide | $2,500 | Fri 28 Aug | Every indexed page has a unique, customer-facing title and description (the 91 collections rewritten from their internal codes, products and articles optimised), plus template rules for new pages. Accepted on a crawl showing no duplicate titles or descriptions. The hreflang-paired /en-au pages are correct localised equivalents, not duplicates. |
| 5 | Site structure and internal linking, plus master FAQ | $2,000 | Fri 4 Sep | The hub and territory architecture (solution categories leading, oils supporting) documented and matching what is live, the master FAQ hub built, and internal-linking corrections implemented to the agreed scope: the hub pages plus eight contextual links per priority cluster to start, which we can extend later if you want to go deeper. |
| 6 | Handover documentation | $500 | Fri 4 Sep | Plain-language record of what was built, where it lives and how to maintain it, with the validation evidence attached. |
| Total | $9,000 | | Paid per line, in full, promptly on acceptance. No penalties. |
Two optional add-ons, worth it before Black Friday and Christmas
| # | Deliverable | Price | Why |
|---|
| 7 | Merchant feed for AI shopping | $900 | Google Merchant Center, Microsoft (for Copilot) and Perplexity Merchant set up, so your products show up inside ChatGPT Shopping and Copilot, not just organic results. High leverage going into your busiest season. |
| 8 | Curated llms.txt and robots confirm | $300 | A hand-built llms.txt pointing AI engines at your Encyclopedia and safety guides. You currently have Shopify's auto-generated one, which is generic. |
| Total bundle, all eight lines | $10,000 | The six core lines plus both add-ons, taken together. Itemised it comes to $10,200, so bundling saves you $200 and sets the whole store up before your busiest season. |
How we have scoped this
- Your site is already most of the way there. It runs a Dawn theme with Okendo reviews and schema already injected site-wide, so most of this is audit, fix the gaps and validate, rather than build from scratch. That is reflected in the price. This is not a rebuild.
- The two bigger lines are 4 and 5. Line 4 is real work because your 91 collections currently carry internal codes (EO-, HC-, MM-) as their titles with empty descriptions, so they need bespoke, customer-facing rewriting. Line 5 is scoped on purpose: we document the full architecture and wire eight strong contextual links into each priority cluster, a defined amount so the line cannot quietly run away on either of us, with room to extend later if you want to go deeper.
- Payment follows the work, not the calendar. Each line is paid in full the moment its machine check passes. The dates against each line are our targets and we hold to them, but if a validation takes a little longer to crawl or index, that only changes when you release the payment, never whether it is owed. Every line we complete that passes its check is paid, in full, even if the crawl lands a few days after the target.
- Measurement stays as agreed: Shopify orders are the system of record, and the baseline is locked and split branded versus non-branded before we start. The dashboard, certification and content build stay with the October conversation, once the platform is live.
One practical note on access. Our current Shopify access is Reports and Analytics only, which is read-only. To deploy the work we will need either edit access to your theme and product content, or we hand your team or developer the ready-to-import files and they apply them. We are happy either way, so it is your call on how hands-on you would like us to be inside your store. Nothing changes about ownership: it all stays in your accounts.
What we need to start Monday
A short checklist. Everything below keeps all your data, markup and configuration inside your own accounts, and any access is limited and revocable.
1. One decision: how the work reaches your store
The work lands in two buckets, and only the second needs a call from you:
- Your content and data (the metadata in line 4, which includes giving your 91 collections real customer-facing names and search descriptions in place of the internal codes, plus the internal links in line 5): none of this touches theme code. We hand you ready-to-import spreadsheets that load through Matrixify, the standard Shopify bulk-import app, in a single import you can preview and roll back. Our strong preference is to do this ourselves through Matrixify so it is fast and clean, but if you would rather run the import yourself or have someone do it, the files are yours and it is a straightforward job. This is titles, descriptions and links, not the on-page marketing copy for each collection, which is content that sits with the October build.
- The schema itself (lines 1, 2 and 3): this is the only part that edits your Dawn theme, and it is a handful of precise, surgical snippets in the product, article and head templates, no design or layout changes. Do you have a developer? If so, we hand them the exact snippets and they paste them in. If not, give us limited theme access and we apply them for you. That is genuinely the only decision we need before Monday.
2. Access (limited, revocable, all in your accounts)
- Shopify: if we deploy directly, upgrade our collaborator access to include Themes, Products and Content (Pages and Blog posts). If you prefer to keep us at Reports and Analytics, we route the theme edits through your developer and use Matrixify for the data instead. Either works.
- Matrixify installed (the free tier covers this), if we are using the import route.
- Search Console and Analytics: already sorted, no change needed.
3. Your data (the few things only you hold)
- Barcodes / GTINs: confirm whether they are in your product data. If you want real GTINs in the markup, a quick product export is perfect. If not, we use your brand plus SKU, which Google fully accepts.
- Dr Bo, for the entity layer: LinkedIn URL, your social profile links, a short bio and credentials, a headshot, and any awards or press we can reference. This also feeds the Wikidata submission.
- The sustainability report you mentioned, wherever it lives.
4. Ways of working (as you set out)
- Access arranged within 2 working days, approvals back within 24 to 48 hours. If we are ever the hold-up, your dates extend by the same number of days.
- We capture and lock the baseline (Shopify orders, split branded versus non-branded) on day one, before any work starts.
- We run everything from a shared working sheet you can review and comment on as we go, so nothing is a surprise.
5. A 30-minute kick-off, 11am Monday
To confirm the deploy route, hand over access, and point us at the founder assets. If 11am does not suit, tell me what does. After that you approve as we ship, line by line.
Next step
Confirm the six lines and the dates, tell us on the two optional add-ons, and we start Monday.
Team Empathy · Search & AI for ecommerce
ben@teamempathy.co.nz · teamempathy.co.nz