At our recent Team Time event, our team partook in a springtime challenge. Pairs of Sliders were tasked with building the tallest “nest” we could for marshmallow Peeps, using only dry spaghetti noodles and tape.

My partner and I were confident in our strategy; carefully bundled noodles were sure to make our structure solid.

But it was soon clear that Ashley and Abby were the team with the winning game plan. Their structure rose high and stood sound, holding an entire family of Peeps.

While the rest of us frantically tried to get ours creations off the table, they had a winning tactic—the foundation was taped securely in place! It wasn’t sliding all around like ours!

This reminded me of design. Teams can jump into design mode without making sure they're acting on facts. That’s what some prospects hope we’ll do when they come calling. But when we take the time to start from a strong foundation, we multiply the project’s odds of success.

Case in point: One of our clients' tech vendors claimed that could lift their B2B eCommerce website’s conversion by 10%... if they showcased that vendors' logo on their homepage.

"Can you give us a new homepage design that features their logo prominently?" the client asked.

Skeptical, we suggested an alternative approach: competitive research. We created a list of questions to evaluate, then we looked at whether each site used the vendors’ technology, how it was presented, and—you guessed it—whether that logo appeared on the homepage.

This little bit of fact-checking helped our client see that several of the brand examples the vendor cited didn’t actually have their logo on the homepage. So, we did not waste our client’s money on that homepage redesign.

The reminder: Build a solid foundation; be sure your team understands the situation accurately before jumping into design.