HERA Investing × nexodigital

HERA v2.0 — Credibility Platform
Work plan

An eight-week rebuild of HERA's web presence: strategy and design system first, then the brand asset kit, the self-managed site, and technical SEO — shipped on existing managed infrastructure.

Status
Week 10of 12 · Build on staging; review rounds nearly closed
Kickoff
Aug 7, 2026Effective date
Go-live target
To be setProposed on the Oct 9 call · depends on HERA content
Engagement ends
Oct 30, 2026After 30-day support
Deliverables
20Across 6 milestones

Open decisions

The lede is answered: Traci sent the words for all three hero slides on Sep 28. Two questions from the Sep 25 call wait on Mel's read, and neither blocks the rest of the copy.

For Mel Davies and Traci McHenry

Raised on the Sep 25 call · held for Mel

01 · TWO HOME SECTIONS THAT SAY THE SAME THING

Should they become one?

Traci read two sections of the home as the same point made twice, and suggested one section instead: the textured green of Why HERA with its four reasons, and no photograph in place of the taupe panel. She asked us to hold the change until Mel has seen it, so that nothing is built and then undone.

CombineOne section on the textured green, carrying the four reasons. The photograph goes; the page gets shorter.
Keep bothThe two sections stay as they are on staging, each with its new copy.

Status  Held, nothing changed on staging. Blocks  The order of the home scroll

02 · THE PHOTOGRAPHS

One reworked hero image, and how many others?

The hero photograph is generated, not stock: drawn for that frame, with the buildings clear of the text and the gold cast the pages already use. Traci likes it and found nothing better in the stock libraries; Mel would rather lose the building with the plants. On the Sep 25 call Mel's limit was relayed as at most two images that are not HERA's own.

Rework the heroSame angle and light, the plant building replaced by a larger historic building or a city skyline. The photograph stays fixed while the text changes from slide to slide, as it does now.
Hide the large image bandsThe full-width image sections lower on the home can be switched off. They stay as placeholders until you decide, and can be switched back on at any time.

Status  Placeholders kept on staging. Blocks  Nothing else in the build

Answered, and outstanding

The three questions that blocked the sitemap are closed. What remains is a short list, and only the first item is on the critical path.

Settled in the sprint calls

  • Primary audience — stakeholders, operators and vendors. Not qualified investors and not strategic partners: representing the portfolio to investors carries a legal weight this site will not take on.
  • Evidence at launch — carried by two stories rather than figures. P1 Pratia Oncology and Zogen, with team credentials doing the rest through the bios. No capital deployed, no assets under management, no deal count.
  • Primary action — one simple contact form: name, email, message, with the missing privacy consent added. No scheduling tool and no segmented paths.
  • Vertical pages — all four go ahead on a shared template, reviewed and approved, with cross-references between them.
  • Review moves to the staging site — agreed Sep 18. The transition from Figma is done: HERA now comments directly on the pages themselves, section by section, from one link and without an account. Final copy, headings and calls to action come back that way rather than by email. The link is on milestone 04 below.
  • Individual pages for each team member — agreed Sep 18. One page per person rather than four long biographies stacked on a single scroll, with roughly 250 words each so they stay readable on a phone. Already built.
  • The brand pattern is dots — agreed Sep 18, over the green, with the excess taken out of links and other elements. Applied; Mel reviews it next.
  • The hero photograph — a mix of historic and modern buildings, horizontal so it works on the page and on a phone. On Sep 25 it became a generated image rather than a licensed stock photo: made for that frame, with no license to buy and nothing to renew, and HERA comments on it the same way as on the copy.
  • The hero carries at most three slides — agreed Sep 18. On Sep 25 Traci chose one fixed photograph with the text changing from slide to slide, which is how it already works.
  • The lede and the three hero slides — sent by Traci on Sep 28 through the staging comments. Slide one: “We build enduring institutions.” under Operator-led investing. Slide two: “Built by operators. Guided by stewardship.” Slide three: “We think in generations.” Each with its supporting line.
  • Images can be switched off — agreed Sep 25. Every section is a block that can be hidden or shown; an image HERA is not yet sure of stays as a placeholder until the call is made.
  • Image formats — agreed Sep 18: portraits at 4:5 or 3:4, vertical; the hero horizontal.
  • New team photography follows the launch — agreed Sep 18. The site goes live with the portrait slots reserved, and the photos are swapped in afterwards.
  • Seven colors — confirmed Sep 18: the six of the system plus a taupe, which gives cards on the green a border that holds.
  • A permanent logo address for the investor portal — asked Sep 18, now in place. Delivered: the four addresses are listed under milestone 03, a version for dark backgrounds and one for light, in SVG and PNG, and they keep working after launch.
  • The go-live date — to be set. Oct 2 passed with the final copy, the legal disclaimers and Mel’s read still outstanding. We propose a date on the Oct 9 call, counted in business days from the day the last of those three arrives. Late content moves the date, not the price, as the agreement sets out.
  • The heading serif — Frank Ruhl Libre. Three alternates were shown on Sep 11 and Mel confirmed on Sep 14: “Confirmed — our choice is this Frank Ruhl Libre option.” Lora and Domine are out. Spectral stays on the wordmark, so the mark is unaffected, and Open Sans continues to carry everything read at length. Already applied in the build.

Still needed from HERA

  • Mel's read on the copy — Traci's comments are in the build: of the 107 threads on staging, 103 are closed and 4 are open (as of Oct 9). Mel's read of the result is the critical path for the go-live date.
  • Mel's read on the brand pattern and the new visual pass — the pattern is now drawn as live graphics that build as you scroll, and the header, the home photographs and the portfolio logos were reworked. All of it is on staging.
  • Which photographs stay — the three hero photographs are HERA's own picks. The image slots lower on the home carry generated stand-ins; say which to keep, replace or hide.
  • Two biographies run over the agreed length — Mel's at 287 words and Traci's at 351, against the ~250 settled on Sep 18. They are published as written; trimming someone's own biography is HERA's call, not ours.
  • Legal disclaimers, with your counsel — the one item still open since milestone 01, committed for the week of Sep 28. The slots are already drawn, so they drop in; every day they are late moves the launch by a day.
  • Logos — the Oncology Consultants logo for the portfolio card, and SVG versions of the Centro Joyero Select and Gold Sky Group logos, so they stay sharp on every screen.
  • LinkedIn profiles — only Dr. Peguero’s is in place; the Connect button appears on each bio as soon as its profile is supplied.
  • Approval of milestones 01 and 02 in the portal — both delivered in August, neither recorded as approved yet.

Received, and already in the build. The four vertical descriptions with thesis and investment criteria, an advisory section beyond the agreed four, all four team bios, portfolio detail for three companies, and GA4 and Search Console access. Nothing on that list is outstanding — thank you.

Timeline

Six milestones over twelve weeks. Each one gates the next: nothing is built before the design milestone is approved in writing.

Milestone W1W2W3W4W5W6 W7W8W9W10W11W12
01Diagnostic & Strategy Brief
02Design System & Brand Direction
03Hi-Fi Mockups & Brand Kit
04Site Build, CMS & Technical SEO
05Production Go-Live
0630-Day Post-Launch Support
Current week Elapsed Scheduled Today — Fri, Oct 9, 2026

Milestones and deliverables

Eighteen deliverables, each with the acceptance criterion that closes it. A deliverable is accepted on written approval, or automatically after five business days with no objection.

01Diagnostic & Strategy Brief

Delivered · awaiting sign-off

Week 1 · Aug 7 – Aug 13 · Delivered Aug 14

Read the current site, positioning, and competitive context, then turn it into an approved sitemap and a content/SEO roadmap for the new platform.

  • Digital diagnostic report

    Written read of the current site, positioning, and competitive context, with the bottleneck and prioritized quick wins.
    Acceptance — Report delivered and walked through in a review session; HERA confirms receipt in writing.

  • Sitemap and content map

    Blended main page plus top-level subpages, using the reverse-pyramid content hierarchy.
    Acceptance — Sitemap document approved by HERA in writing (Drive or email).

  • SEO target-keyword map

    Priority keywords with search intent and current indexation status.
    Acceptance — A list of at least 5 target keywords with intent and indexation status is delivered.

Read the Diagnostic & Strategy Brief  →

02Design System & Brand Direction

Delivered · awaiting sign-off

Weeks 2–3 · Aug 14 – Aug 27 · Delivered Aug 25

Build the web design system — dark theme, gold accents, typography, components — and present the simplified jaguar and H-mark concepts alongside the site wireframes.

  • Design system foundations

    Curated palette (six swatches), type pairing, and the six base components — buttons, navigation, cards, team bio, forms, and section header — over the spacing grid and dark-theme rules.
    Acceptance — A design-system file containing all named tokens and at least the core components used across the site.

  • Brandmark directions 01, 02 and 03

    Each shown standalone and in the horizontal lockup, gold-on-dark. HERA selects one, and the winner gets its reduced artboard and square favicon crop drawn alongside it rather than retrofitted.
    Acceptance — Final vector files in print and digital variants; HERA sign-off recorded at the brand-direction milestone.

  • Wireframes — home and subpages

    Low-fidelity layout for every agreed page, following the reverse-pyramid structure. Home page delivered; the subpage count depends on the vertical-pages decision.
    Acceptance — Wireframes for every agreed page delivered.

Open the Design System & Brand Direction  →

03Hi-Fi Mockups & Brand Kit

In progress

Weeks 4–7 · Aug 28 – Sep 24 · running past its original window

Every page designed pixel-perfect in Figma and the refined brand identity finalized. It splits in two: the brand kit and the type pairing close on Sep 11, the mockups on Sep 18. So that the build is not held behind the whole of it, milestone 04 starts against the approved foundations in parallel rather than after.

  • High-fidelity Figma mockups

    Pixel-level design of the home page and all subpages, matching what will ship.
    Acceptance — Mockups delivered in Figma and approved with a written go-ahead at the design milestone.

  • Heading serif and the type scale

    The named serif for headings down to H4, over Open Sans for everything read at length, with the sizes and weights each one resolves at.
    Status — The face is settled: Frank Ruhl Libre, confirmed by Mel on Sep 14, and already carrying the headings in the build. What is still open is the published scale — sizes, line heights and weights — which lands with the brand guidelines.
    Acceptance — The face is named and the scale published in the guidelines.

  • Brand pattern

    The HERA pattern drawn from the refined mark: the tile and how it repeats, plus spacing, scale, and the rules for where it may sit and at what opacity.
    Acceptance — Delivered as vector tiles in the export kit, with usage rules in the guidelines.

  • Brand guidelines with size specs

    Usage rules for color, typography, logo, pattern, and minimum/maximum sizes.
    Acceptance — A guidelines PDF specifying color, typography, logo usage, and size rules, accepted in writing.

  • Permanent logo address for the investor portal

    A public address for the logo that other systems can pull from, asked for on the Sep 18 call.
    Status — Delivered Sep 23. Two versions — one for dark backgrounds, one for light — each in SVG and PNG. They are served from the CMS, not from staging, so they keep working when the site moves to herainvesting.com. When the logo changes, the file is replaced under the same address and the portal needs no update.
    Acceptance — Each address opens the logo publicly and stays valid after launch.

    • Dark backgrounds — SVG · PNG
    • Light backgrounds — SVG · PNG

  • Asset export kit

    Logo, pattern and favicons in JPG, PNG, and SVG for decks, business cards, and email signatures, delivered as a single downloadable package — agreed on the Sep 18 call. Photography is not part of this kit: HERA sources it.
    Acceptance — A downloadable kit with all named assets present in the shared Drive folder.

The design file — live from Figma

The whole working file rather than one frame: the home, the vertical-page template, the team and journal layouts, and the brand pattern, laid out side by side. Pan and zoom inside the frame, or open it full-screen. It is embedded live, so it changes as the design does.

04Site Build, CMS & Technical SEO

In progress

Weeks 5–10 · Sep 4 – today · running past its window while HERA content arrives

The approved design goes live on staging, wired to a self-managed CMS for the journal, bios and portfolio, with technical SEO and performance tuning applied. It was started alongside milestone 03 rather than after it, so that the build is not held behind the last design decision. The foundations that do not depend on the typography choice are already standing.

  • Individual team pages

    One page per person rather than a single scrolling list, agreed on the Sep 18 call.
    Status — Built and live on staging: /team/ plus a page for each of the four. Photography is still a reserved slot on every one of them.
    Acceptance — Each team member reachable at their own URL, readable on a phone.

  • Front-end build on staging

    Dark-theme site: main page with scroll and embedded content, plus side pages.
    Status — The staging environment is live and every page of the agreed sitemap renders on it: the home, the four vertical pages, team, advisory, journal, contact and the three policy pages. Since Sep 24 every page follows the design file, header and footer included, and the portfolio sits on the home rather than on a page of its own. The journal reads from the CMS; its six entries are samples until HERA writes the first ones. Photography, the final marks and the legal text are drawn as reserved slots rather than filled with stand-ins. The mobile layout is built and can be reviewed on a phone from the same link.
    Next — Traci's copy goes into the pages, then Mel's read. The pre-final site is due in week 8, with the CMS walkthrough the same week so HERA can edit copy, journal entries and team members without us.
    Acceptance — A staging URL renders all approved pages correctly on desktop and mobile.

  • Directus CMS with journal

    Self-editing for journal posts, team bios, and portfolio entries, on a self-hosted Directus instance.
    Status — The CMS is installed and the content model is built: verticals, people, journal, portfolio, the home texts and the advisory page. Everything HERA has sent is already loaded in it — the four vertical theses, the four bios, and the three portfolio companies — and the site is generated from that content rather than from files.
    Acceptance — HERA creates, edits, and publishes a journal post and edits a bio without developer help, demonstrated in a training session.

  • Technical SEO setup

    Metadata, sitemap.xml, robots, and structured data.
    Acceptance — Search Console shows the submitted sitemap and no critical crawl errors.

  • Core Web Vitals optimization

    Performance tuning of the home page and key pages.
    Acceptance — Home and key pages pass Core Web Vitals (mobile) in Lighthouse at handoff.

Review the build — comment on the pages themselves

Open staging and leave comments  →

The tool demonstrated on the Sep 18 call, and the route the final copy takes back to us. The link opens the staging site with commenting turned on: click anywhere on a page, give a name and an email — no password, nothing to install — and the note is anchored to that spot, with a screenshot of what you were looking at. We mark a comment in review once the change is made; closing it stays yours. Headings, calls to action and section text come back this way, section by section, rather than by email. Visitors who reach staging without this link see the pages only, never the comments.

05Production Go-Live

In progress

Weeks 8–9 as planned · go-live date to be set

The rebuilt site goes live on herainvesting.com with existing URLs preserved, and analytics are wired for ongoing measurement. The date is set when the final copy and the legal disclaimers arrive; content that lands later moves it by the same margin.

  • Production go-live

    Deploy to the live domain with prior content preserved or redirected.
    Acceptance — The new site is live on herainvesting.com and verified reachable, with existing URLs preserved or redirected.

  • Analytics wiring

    GA4, Search Console and Microsoft Clarity connected to the domain.
    Acceptance — GA4 receives pageview data, Search Console is verified for the domain, and Clarity records sessions.

0630-Day Post-Launch Support

Scheduled

30 days from go-live

A dedicated support channel stays open for the first month after launch to catch fixes, swap in final photos, and confirm everything runs smoothly.

  • 30-day post-launch support

    Bug fixes and corrections to the original deliverables, plus copy and photo swaps — agreed on the Sep 18 call. Excludes structural changes, new features, and work beyond the original scope.
    Acceptance — A support channel is active for 30 days from go-live with logged responses.

Who owns what

nexodigital brings structure and design. HERA brings the substance. The plan holds only if both sides keep their side of the line.

HERA provides

  • An internal owner — Mel Davies — empowered to approve milestones, with committed weekly hours
  • Page copy, thesis content, portfolio details, and bios, per the sprint calendar
  • Content and assets via the shared Google Drive, with an email notice when files are added — the folder does not auto-notify
  • Approval of the design/brand milestone and the staging site within 3 business days
  • Domain and DNS access as needed, plus any existing analytics accounts
  • Final team photos when available — a post-launch swap is acceptable

nexodigital provides

  • Diagnostic, sitemap, and SEO keyword strategy
  • The full design system and refined brand marks in Figma
  • Wireframes and pixel-level mockups for every page
  • The front-end build, headless CMS, and technical SEO
  • Go-live on existing managed infrastructure, with analytics wired
  • A weekly one-hour sprint call, Fridays at 11:00 CT, with agenda and links sent ahead

Scope boundaries

What is deliberately outside this engagement, and the assumptions the timeline rests on.

Out of scope

  • Paid media and ads management (SEM) — coordinated with partners, not run by nexodigital
  • Professional team-bio photography — placeholders are used and swapped for final photos
  • Ongoing content writing beyond initial migration
  • Extended corporate brand book beyond the web-facing identity — sub-brands, portfolio-company logos
  • Third-level subpages, additional languages, e-commerce, or an investor portal
  • CRM implementation or marketing automation

Assumptions

  • Colors and typography are final; brand direction — jaguar and H-mark — locks at the design milestone
  • HERA supplies copy, thesis, portfolio details, and bios on the sprint calendar
  • Domain and DNS access granted for go-live on existing managed infrastructure
  • The site launches with the content HERA delivers to the shared Drive
  • Late content shifts the timeline, not the price
  • A HERA decision-maker attends the weekly sprint call

Up to 2 rounds of reasonable revisions are included per deliverable, provided they stay within the original scope.

Decisions locked at kickoff

Agreed on the kickoff call, August 7, 2026.

Platform

Stack
Astro — WordPress retired
Approach
Built from scratch, no themes
Design theme
Dark, gold-accented
CMS
Directus — self-managed
Mobile nav
No header menu — full scroll
Infrastructure
Existing managed hosting

Content strategy — reverse pyramid

  • 1 · Top — what HERA does, who it helps, why it matters now
  • 2 · Credibility pillars
  • 3 · Supporting evidence — social proof, academic backing, numbers
  • 4 · Bottom — history, philosophy, disclaimers

100% of visitors see the first section; only ~15% reach the lower ones, and 60–70% never finish the page. The top half carries the work. Current retention is ~30 seconds per visit — the target is 90 seconds.