Customer connection
Keep business owners in touch with their customers.
Merlin project briefMerlin project brief
Project notes / Product brief
Merlin turns local attention into timely, personal outreach.
A complete summary of the product requirements and website direction for Merlin, the low-friction growth platform for local businesses.
01 / Requirements
What Merlin must do
Trend discovery
Proactively identify trends and conversations connected to a business.
Intent matching
Find potential customers discussing services they may need and help the business reach out.
Location-aware outreach
Support configurable local searches, such as finding someone nearby publicly asking about pizza and offering a relevant coupon.
Any local business
Make the location-aware model flexible for restaurants, services, and other locally owned businesses.
Timely action
Treat the pizza scenario as an example of discovering public intent, matching it to a business, and supporting personalized outreach.
Social presence
Help businesses create a social media presence across supported platforms whether they already have accounts or are starting from zero.
Merlin wizard
Guide businesses through creating social profiles and getting them ready to use.
02 / Brand direction
Affordable growth with local momentum
Mood
Affordable, aggressive growth, local momentum, trust-building, and low-friction marketing.
Personality
Direct, practical, growth-focused, confident, local, and helpful.
Audience
Small businesses within a 30-mile radius of Guilford, Indiana, especially locally owned restaurants and service businesses.
First impression
Grow your business for just $1 a day, with one place for local growth, more sales, less chaos, and customers reached where they already are.
Value proposition
Increase sales by reaching users across the top five social platforms and managing communication in one place without traditional marketing complexity or cost.
03 / Website design brief
Compact, clear, and easy to scan
Layout
Hero headline, quick value proposition, clear benefit display, concise feature points, and a strong CTA.
Density
Spacious and airy, but compact enough to fit on one screen without feeling crowded.
Order
Hero, quick value summary, core platform benefits, then CTA.
Visual style
Clear, professional, polished, modern, and easy to navigate; not overly fancy or gimmicky.
Palette
Purple, blue, white, and black text with crisp premium contrast.
Typography
Clean, modern, highly readable sans-serif with strong hierarchy and no clutter.
Images
Illustrations, abstract graphics, product screenshots, flat design, dark mode, and light mode are all possible directions.
Logo
Wizard, magical, sleek, playful, and technical.
04 / UX and messaging
Make the value obvious immediately
Headline
Confident, direct, benefit-first, short, and punchy.
CTA
Clear, action-oriented, and focused on growth, visibility, and customer engagement.
Priority
Make the core benefit, $1/day message, and CTA immediately prominent.
Goal
Visitors should quickly find what they need without reading long paragraphs or scrolling through unnecessary content.
Content
Brief, concise, high-signal messaging with short bullets, quick summaries, and obvious labels.
05 / Product example
The pizza scenario explains the bigger idea.
Someone within a configurable local search area publicly asks about pizza. Merlin identifies the relevant intent, matches it to a pizza business, and supports a timely personalized response such as a coupon or offer. Pizza is only the example: the same model should work for any local business.
06 / Open items
What still needs definition
Decisions
Project notes currently have no recorded decisions.
Examples and inspiration
No reference sites, visual elements to borrow, or elements to avoid have been recorded yet.
Iteration notes
No preservation notes, change requests, current feedback, or future test ideas have been recorded yet.
Follow-up items
No follow-up items have been recorded yet.