Digital
strategy
Replace competing opinions with a shared view of the evidence, the constraint and the next decision.
Evidence over opinion.
I turn complicateddigital work intomomentum.
I'm James Watkins, a digital strategy consultant and founder of JAi Digital. For eight years I ran digital marketing for phs Group, the UK's leading workplace services group. Now I help marketing leaders turn unclear priorities, disconnected systems and stuck delivery into focused decisions and working change.
Digital strategy · Websites & conversion · AI & automation · Delivery leadership · Evidence over opinion · Digital strategy · Websites & conversion · AI & automation · Delivery leadership · Evidence over opinion ·
The connected system
Four disciplines.
One direction.
The first job is usually finding out what the marketing is actually producing - and the answer is often not the marketing. I connect the commercial goal, the customer journey and the delivery system so people can see what matters, decide what to do and make it stick.
Digital
Websites &
conversion
Turn websites into working parts of the commercial system, built around the decisions real customers need to make.
AI &
automation
As an AI automation consultant, I use AI where it shortens the work or improves the decision, without hiding the reasoning, ownership or risk.
Delivery
leadership
Give difficult programmes a clear operating rhythm, named owners and a practical route from intent to working change.
Selected work / evidence in progress
Show the thinking.
Prove the change.
The record, told the way the work actually happened: the problem, the decision, the work and the evidenced outcome. Company results are company results. The team I led gets its credit, and so do the people around it.
01↗
02↗
03↗
Explore the work archive ↗phs Group: the rebuild that quadrupled conversion
Eight years leading digital across 14 brand websites. The rebuilt phs.co.uk converted at four times its old rate within 90 days - with the discovery, testing and board reporting behind it shown, not asserted.
View the phs Group case study ↗02Matta: a brand untouched since 1992
A full rebrand and website for a safety surfacing manufacturer whose identity had not moved in three decades.
View the Matta case study ↗03phs Greenleaf: one platform, many brands
Part of a programme that built six websites from one set of 35 components, so each brand kept its character and the group kept its sanity.
View the phs Greenleaf case study ↗A practical operating method
Keep change
moving.
LOOP turns a complicated situation into a repeatable sequence of listening, framing, operating and learning - without pretending the work will behave like a straight line.
Listen
Hear the problem from the people living it. Gather the evidence, constraints and competing views before naming the work.
Outline
Make the system visible. Frame the opportunity, the hypothesis, the priorities and the decisions that still need making.
Operations
Put the change into the real operating environment with owners, dependencies, quality checks and a route back.
Perfecting
Read what happened. Keep, adapt, scale or stop - then feed the learning into the next bounded loop.
Blog & guides
Notes from
the real work.
Writing about evidence-led digital work, useful AI and how to keep delivery moving when the system is complicated.
Why the website brief is usually the wrong place to start
Start with the system, the customer and the decision. Let the brief follow.
Follow on Substack ↗The useful line between AI speed and human judgement
A practical way to move faster without making the reasoning disappear.
Follow on Substack ↗When a digital roadmap becomes a hiding place
Replace the theatre of certainty with a visible sequence of useful decisions.
Follow on Substack ↗
About James
Clear thinking.
Working change.
Over 25 years in sales and marketing, fifteen of them in digital: selling advertising in Newport, running my own agency, then eight years running digital for the UK's leading workplace services group. I work where marketing, technology, operations and leadership overlap - the place where important digital work becomes hard to see and harder to move.
I make the system legible, create the conditions for a good decision and stay close enough to delivery that the thinking survives contact with reality. Strategy only matters when someone can use it on Monday morning.