Spectrum Website Guidelines · Stakeholder Research · March 2026
What the
Stakeholders
Said
Seven stakeholder interviews. A grounded synthesis — no editorializing, only evidence. Designed to inform the foundational guidelines that unite Digital Sales and Web Content Marketing through shared strategic principles.
"The website is our company's biggest billboard."
Echoed by 3+ participants, unpromptedResearch Overview
Who We Talked To
Seven stakeholders across executive leadership, Residential creative and marketing, Residential digital sales, and the Business side. Interviews ran 45–60 minutes each in March 2026.
Simon Cassels
Chief Creative Officer
Rob Polleys
Sr. Director, Digital & Creative Strategy
Joan McBennett
Director, Digital Creative
John Barone
Director, Digital Content Creative
Pete Peterson
Sr. Director, Product Experience & UX
Jen Martin
Business Creative Marketing
Paul Burgess
Sr. Director, Digital Sales Business
All 7 Participants · Unprompted Agreement
The Brand Perception Gap
Every participant described nearly identical words for both columns — without being shown each other's answers. The gap between these two columns is the brief.
Responses were collected independently. Convergence was not prompted.
Individual Interviews
Interview Summaries
What each stakeholder brought to the conversation — their perspective, their core challenge, and what their answers point toward for the guidelines.
Simon Cassels
Chief Creative Officer
Long-view, technology-forward thinker. Encouraged by 18 months of progress but clear decisions are still driven by gut, not data — and that the site must meet customers where they're heading, not just where they are.
"We don't have qualitative and quantitative data to help us make decisions — in this environment that should be the be-all and end-all." CMS fragmentation across resi, business, and enterprise blocks every ambition downstream.
The guidelines need a stated philosophy, not just rules. Acknowledge current constraints while setting a clear direction teams can write toward now.
Rob Polleys
Sr. Director, Digital & Creative Strategy · Resi Creative & Marketing
The most architecturally minded and most frustrated. Wants construction, not surgery: "We are not refining at 30 PSI vs. 31 PSI." Explicitly aware that inconsistent channels hurt AIO — AI engines surface whichever version they find first.
No source of truth for product messaging, imagery, or legal copy — so creative teams spend energy verifying the story rather than telling it. "A Frankenstein of a site built by 50 stakeholders, each getting what they want."
The guidelines should be what Rob describes: a living source of truth that removes guesswork. It needs a named owner and maintenance protocol — not a one-time deliverable.
Joan McBennett
Director, Digital Creative · Resi Creative & Marketing
The voice of the customer — and the most direct about failures. Her conviction: when the site is clean and respects the customer's time, it converts. The Invincible Wi-Fi vs. Internet pages prove both sides of this, side by side.
"The single biggest problem with the website today? It's verbose." Also flagged a structural confusion costing conversions: Internet and Wi-Fi are treated as separate products when customers experience them as one thing.
The guidelines must govern content density, reading level, and information hierarchy with rules specific enough to be binding — not aspirational language that teams can interpret away.
John Barone
Director, Digital Content Creative · Resi Creative & Marketing
Pragmatist. Gave the site 6/10. Invincible Wi-Fi was his proof of concept: given freedom to build an Apple-inspired content experience, the team ran out of inventory in a week. Spectrum has been in sell mode so long it forgot how to build.
"Lack of CMS is really killing us for years and years." Every content update is high-effort; personalization and segmentation are impossible. The team can envision the right experience but can't execute at pace or scale.
Set the standard for rich content experiences now, and distinguish what's achievable today from what's designed for — so teams can write toward a defined future state as infrastructure arrives.
Pete Peterson
Sr. Director, Product Experience & UX · Resi Digital Sales
He has the consumer data — and it confirms what others suspect. "Don't rush me" is a direct customer quote. He also named the internal gap most clearly: Digital Sales and Creative/Marketing have no shared principles, so the site serves both teams' metrics at the customer's expense.
No audience segmentation framework. "We don't have the point of view yet" — the content strategy doesn't exist at the operational level needed to guide execution, regardless of persona or purchase stage.
The guidelines are literally what Pete is describing. If they don't bridge Digital Sales and Creative/Marketing with shared principles, they'll remain a creative document that sales doesn't feel obligated to follow.
Jen Martin
Business Creative Marketing
Business-side voice. Her SMB customer "sees Spectrum as a necessary evil — like electricity." That's both a persona insight and a content challenge: commodities have to earn trust before they earn a click, and the site doesn't do that yet.
No clear customer flow. "Different teams have different mandates, and the site resolves that tension by adding rather than prioritizing." The result feels like a departmental negotiation, not a designed experience.
The resi/business split must be addressed explicitly — the business site isn't a resi site with a different logo. The guidelines also need a mechanism for resolving cross-team conflicts before they reach the page.
Paul Burgess
Sr. Director, Digital Sales Business
The business site fails its least-informed customer most severely: if you know what you want, it works; if you don't, it abandons you. He also carries the clearest picture of technical fragmentation — AEM for the site, Phoenix for buy flow, not talking cleanly to each other.
"The site is almost entirely offer-based." The consideration-phase customer has nowhere to go. The education layer is missing — and the competitive environment no longer supports assuming customers arrive already informed.
Treat the awareness-phase customer as a first-class audience. For the business site, education before conversion is a strategic requirement. Define what the education layer looks like and how it connects to buy flow.
Cross-Cutting Themes
Eight Themes Across All Interviews
Themes that appeared across multiple participants, grounded in direct evidence. Each includes what it means for the guidelines and the top five website needs it points to.
"The website plays a gigantic role, an integral role. It is our company's biggest billboard."
John Barone · Director, Digital Content Creative"It's the billboard. We know people take 2–3 visits before they commit."
Joan McBennett · Director, Digital CreativeThe guidelines need to establish the site's strategic position — not just its rules. Teams need a stated principle that makes clear the site isn't a utility, it's a brand standard. Every content decision should be held against the question: does this represent what the brand is trying to become? Without that anchor, teams will keep optimizing for their individual mandate.
- A defined site purpose statement that all teams — creative and digital sales — are aligned to
- A brand-to-web translation layer: how brand values (trustworthy, premium, innovative) become web-specific content and design standards
- Page-type quality tiers that define what "good" looks like at different levels — homepage vs. product page vs. campaign landing
- A site audit or review framework teams can use to measure pages against the standard over time
- Clear ownership of the brand standard as it lives on the web, distinct from advertising or retail
"The website leans more sales versus some of the brand building, and it doesn't have to be either or — we just have to bring it together in the right way."
Jen Martin · Business Creative Marketing"There's always been a philosophy here that if you get them into the funnel, just based on volume, they're going to buy. I think that's true, but we've never had competition like we do today."
John Barone · Director, Digital Content CreativeThe guidelines must establish a page purpose model that defines when a page's job is to educate, when it's to consider, and when it's to convert — and what content belongs in each mode. Without this model, the sell-vs.-build tension will continue to resolve by accident rather than design. The guidelines should also define what conversion-readiness looks like so that CTAs earn their placement.
- A page taxonomy classifying every page type by primary purpose: awareness, consideration, or conversion
- Defined content requirements for each purpose type — what education pages must include before they drive to buy flow
- Guidelines for CTA density and placement relative to content density per page type
- A framework for brand content inclusions on high-traffic transactional pages — product pages can have commercial intent and brand depth simultaneously
- Rules for when a rich content experience should precede and wrap the buy flow rather than compete with it
"We've inherited a little bit of a Frankenstein of a site. If you have 50 different stakeholders and each gets what they want, where's the unified vision?"
Rob Polleys · Sr. Director, Digital & Creative Strategy"There's just a lot of patchwork that's been happening, and a lot of restraint on what can happen on which pages."
Jen Martin · Business Creative MarketingDesign standards in the guidelines must be specific enough to be self-enforcing — they cannot depend on stakeholder negotiation each time. The guidelines should also address module behavior in context, not just module design in isolation. How modules interact with each other on a page matters as much as how each module looks on its own. Simon Cassels raised this directly: ten different families on one page, and a user looks at faces rather than content.
- Visual standards for the core page templates: homepage, product hub, product detail, campaign landing
- Module-level interaction rules — how adjacent modules must relate in contrast, hierarchy, and whitespace
- Photography and imagery standards specific to web, distinct from billboard, broadcast, and social specs
- Approved component usage by page type, including restrictions on what components cannot appear together
- A deviation protocol — when teams believe they need to go off-standard, what is the review and approval process
"The single biggest problem with the website today? It's verbose. There's a lot of words in those cards. There's a lot of bullet points. There's a lot of repetition. Charlie Brown's teacher talking at me."
Joan McBennett · Director, Digital Creative"Our customers' average reading level is that of a 6th grader. And our copy... it's not a winning combination."
Rob Polleys · Sr. Director, Digital & Creative StrategyThe guidelines must establish content economy as a non-negotiable principle and set specific density guidelines per module type. "Clean copy" cannot be aspirational language in the document — it needs to be measurable. Joan McBennett was clear: when the site is clean, straightforward, and respects the customer's time, it converts. That's both a principle and a proof point.
- Maximum copy length guidelines by module type — hero, card, feature list, disclaimer
- A target reading level for all customer-facing copy (Flesch-Kincaid or equivalent), with a defined standard by page type
- Rules governing when bullet points are appropriate vs. when prose is required — and vice versa
- Information hierarchy per page: what's primary (one thing), secondary (two to three), tertiary (available on scroll/click)
- Legal copy handling standards: how to meet compliance requirements without leading with limitations
"We have very strong velocity into the sales funnel and once there, a very low click driver — arguably too slick. [Customers say:] 'Don't rush me.'"
Pete Peterson · Sr. Director, Product Experience"We don't build out those rich content-heavy experiences that other brands do. Charter has been so shop heavy — buy, buy, buy."
John Barone · Director, Digital Content CreativeThe guidelines need to establish a content readiness framework — what a page must accomplish before it earns the right to convert. This is the principle behind slowing down before the CTA, and it needs to be stated as strategy, not UX preference, so both creative and digital sales teams are bound by it. Pete Peterson's research showed that customers will accept more clicks when it means they get the information they need — closing rates improve when the pace is right.
- Minimum content requirements before a primary CTA appears — what the customer must have been told before being asked to buy
- Progressive disclosure patterns: how to layer information so customers self-select into the buy flow rather than being pushed
- UX behavior principles governing pacing — when slowing the user down is the correct commercial decision
- Journey-phase mapping per core page: which phase of the decision is the customer likely in, and what does that mean for content priority
- Standards for second-chance content — what exists for the customer who bounces off the buy flow before completing
"We don't know how to communicate to them based on who they are and where they are — both in their maturation toward purchasing and who they are as a demographic."
Pete Peterson · Sr. Director, Product Experience"We don't have the point of view yet. We have the top-line content strategy deck, but we don't have our point of view on how that breaks down into the next layer."
Pete Peterson · Sr. Director, Product ExperiencePersonalization technology will eventually solve some of this. But the guidelines must establish the content strategy framework now — before the technology — so that teams can write to defined audiences even in a static environment. The framework also sets the brief for what personalization should do once the CMS is in place. Without the strategy, the technology will have nothing to activate.
- Persona-to-content mapping: for each defined persona (Resi, SMB, Enterprise), what does each page type need to say and do
- Geographic content strategy: how to handle national pricing vs. localized pricing and service availability states
- Purchase-stage content requirements: what the site must provide to awareness-stage, consideration-stage, and decision-stage customers
- Resi vs. Business differentiation guidelines: where content strategy diverges and how the shared guidelines accommodate both
- A framework for future personalization: audience signals, content variants, and how the guidelines translate into a personalization brief
"There isn't a consolidated source of truth. My team spends a lot of time gathering and trying to understand the story and the information."
Rob Polleys · Sr. Director, Digital & Creative Strategy"I think we do an incredible job with what we are given. But imagine if we were given what we need and how much better we could be."
Rob Polleys · Sr. Director, Digital & Creative StrategyThe guidelines document itself must function as a source of truth — but only if it's maintained. The guidelines must therefore include a governance model: who owns the document, how often it's updated, what triggers a review, and who has authority to approve deviations. A guidelines document without an owner is a snapshot, not a standard. Rob Polleys also emphasized the AIO dimension: consistent messaging across the site is no longer just a brand problem, it's a discoverability problem.
- Master product messaging standards — approved positioning language, product descriptions, and value proposition framing by product line
- Disclaimer and legal copy standards centralized so they are not reinvented on every page
- Cross-channel consistency requirements: where the web standard sets the floor for email, direct mail, and social
- Page-level ownership assignments: who is responsible for each page type meeting the standard
- AIO/SEO implications explicitly addressed — how consistent messaging across the site improves AI-cited content accuracy and organic discoverability
"That's a very difficult message to convey and we don't do a good job of it. Our value proposition really only comes into play when you bundle."
Rob Polleys · Sr. Director, Digital & Creative Strategy"Internet is not equal to Wi-Fi. And we never make that clear for anybody."
Joan McBennett · Director, Digital CreativePricing presentation isn't a legal or finance problem — it's a content strategy problem. The guidelines must establish progressive simplicity as the pricing principle: what shows first, what shows when, and how to communicate bundle value without requiring mental math from the customer. Joan McBennett's Chipotle test is the right benchmark: how quickly can a customer understand what they're getting and what it costs?
- Pricing presentation standards: what appears at national level, what appears post-localization, and how the transition is handled without losing the customer
- Bundling communication guidelines: how to express the value of multi-product adoption without leading with complexity or requiring mental math
- Internet vs. Wi-Fi distinction standards: how the site consistently frames the relationship between these two concepts across all pages
- Mobile savings communication guidelines: when and how to introduce the mobile add-on story within the Internet purchase journey
- The localization experience standard: how the site transitions from generic to localized pricing, including what happens when service is unavailable in a given area
Where Stakeholders Diverge
Key Tensions in the Data
Not everything aligned. These contradictions are data too — they are not resolved here.
Note: These tensions are not resolved here. Unresolved tensions are data. Their resolution requires human judgment and organizational decision-making — the guidelines can set the principles, but they cannot make the call.
What Wasn't Said
Gaps & Silences
Topics expected from this participant pool that were absent or thin in the data. Only genuine absences are flagged here.
The existing customer experience
The logged-in spectrum.net experience was mentioned only briefly. No participant gave a detailed view of how the post-purchase website relationship should work or how it connects to the .com. The guidelines project will need to decide whether and how this in-scope.
The customer voice
All seven participants are internal stakeholders. No customer perspective appears in these interviews. Pete Peterson's UX research was referenced but not presented. This synthesis reflects what stakeholders believe about customers — not what customers said. Consumer research will need to pressure-test these assumptions.
Measurement and success criteria
Stakeholders mentioned metrics — localization rate, conversion, time on site, PSU growth — but no one defined what "success" looks like at the full-site level once the guidelines are in place. Establishing that definition should be part of the guidelines project itself.
Accessibility
Not mentioned by any participant. Given that Rob Polleys cited an average customer reading level of 6th grade and the complexity of current content, the absence of accessibility as a stated requirement is notable and worth raising explicitly in the guidelines.
Direct Quotes
Voices from the Room
The quotes that said it best — specific, vivid, and impossible to paraphrase without losing something.
"We're not refining at 30 PSI vs. 31 PSI. We need to test: does the car with four wheels work, or the car with three?"
Rob Polleys · Sr. Director, Digital & Creative Strategy"We don't have a clear flow to follow for our users. It's been kind of over time added to, band-aided."
Jen Martin · Business Creative Marketing"When we're clean, when we're straightforward, when we respect the customer's time — that's when those pages are successful."
Joan McBennett · Director, Digital Creative"Once people get into the funnel and understand the offer, for the most part people say it's simple to use."
John Barone · Director, Digital Content Creative"We are not data-oriented around our choices that we make on the website. There's too much subjectivity in it."
Simon Cassels · Chief Creative Officer"The biggest metric anybody cares about is: did you localize and did you convert?"
Joan McBennett · Director, Digital Creative"Our best deals require you to do [mobile switching], and it's just this anxiety cloud — even for our own employees."
Rob Polleys · Sr. Director, Digital & Creative Strategy"We are at a time with entirely new leadership. Status quo is just not anything we should be doing."
Joan McBennett · Director, Digital CreativeFor the Brand Guidelines
Top 10 Recommendations
Drawn directly from the synthesis. These are the highest-priority areas the guidelines must address to fulfill the project objective: uniting Digital Sales and Web Content Marketing through shared strategic principles for all content development.
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1Establish a site purpose statement every team signs off on The guidelines must open with a single, clear statement of what the website is for — one that both Digital Sales and Creative/Marketing can claim as their own. Without a shared starting point, every subsequent rule will be contested.
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2Build a page purpose taxonomy as the organizing principle Define every page type by its primary job: awareness, consideration, or conversion. Content requirements, CTA rules, and design standards should all flow from this classification — not from team preference or legacy precedent.
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3Set measurable content standards — not aspirational ones Establish specific, auditable rules: maximum copy length by module type, target reading level (Flesch-Kincaid), CTA density limits per page type. "Clean copy" is not a standard. A word count ceiling is.
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4Define content readiness before conversion — make it policy Establish minimum content requirements that must be met before any page can drive a primary CTA. This principle must be stated as commercial strategy, not UX preference, so it binds Digital Sales and Creative equally.
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5Create an audience segmentation framework — before the technology Map each defined persona to content requirements by page type and purchase stage. This framework must exist in the guidelines now so it can inform both static content decisions and the eventual personalization brief once the CMS is in place.
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6Address pricing presentation as a content problem, not a legal one Establish progressive simplicity as the pricing principle. Define what appears before localization, what appears after, and how bundling value is communicated without requiring mental math. The Internet/Wi-Fi distinction must be resolved and consistently applied across all pages.
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7Establish a centralized source of truth for product messaging The guidelines must include — or directly reference — approved language for product positioning, value propositions, and legal disclaimers. This is both a brand consistency requirement and an AIO/SEO performance requirement.
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8Set web-specific photography and design standards Define imagery requirements specific to the web environment — distinct from billboard, broadcast, and social specs. Simon Cassels was explicit: web content photography operates under different rules, and the site currently doesn't reflect that distinction.
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9Write the Residential and Business guidelines as related but distinct The business site serves a different audience, decision journey, and competitive context. The guidelines should have shared principles and separate execution guidance — not a single set of rules that assumes a resi default.
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10Build governance into the guidelines from day one Assign page-level ownership, define a review cadence, name a document owner, and specify what triggers an update. A guidelines document without a governance model is a snapshot. It becomes a standard only when someone is responsible for keeping it current.