Capabilities
Get found first. Then everything else.
Deadpan Labs is a Miami ecommerce growth agency. We get Shopify and DTC brands found — ranked in search and named in the AI answers buyers now ask first — and we build the platform the business runs on. There are six practices, listed below. Every one of them is sold on its own.
The core is getting the store found: technical SEO and generative-engine optimization run together, measured monthly against the questions your buyers actually ask. Around it sit paid media and brand, software and mobile, and security. Underneath it, if you want it, sits the platform — your orders, operations, CRM and campaign metrics in one dashboard, which is why our reporting is instrumented rather than assembled. Each practice carries its own scope and its own invoice.
Last updated 2026-08-22 · Deadpan Labs · Miami, FL
01
SEO & AI search
Our core, and a complete engagement in its own right — you don't need anything else from us to buy it. Technical SEO, generative-engine optimization (GEO), and the content that fuels both: ranked in classic search and named in AI answers (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) when a shopper asks what to buy. We don't just hand you a scorecard; we run the fix, or integrate your existing tools and agencies. You get a monthly panel showing whether the answers name you and who they name instead — and if you also run our platform, those metrics land on your dashboard.
Typical work: product data an engine can actually read, a content engine, getting named in the answer.
What you get
- A monthly panel of your buyers' real questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI, sampled repeatedly rather than once
- Named substitutes — which brands the engines recommend instead of you, and the sources they cite to justify it
- Product and organization structured data across the catalog, at variant level where it matters
- Technical audit: crawlability, metadata, structure, speed, and whether a parser can read a page a shopper finds complete
- Citation work — the independent roundups, review platforms and community threads the engines actually read
- The raw answers attached to every report, so you can check our work
02
Paid Media & Brand
Campaign strategy and buying across Meta, TikTok, and Google on tested creative, plus naming, voice, and visual identity — run for you or alongside your team, with results on your dashboard.
Typical work: a launch campaign, a scaling account, a name and identity from scratch, a rebrand.
What you get
- Account and funnel audit; creative testing matrix
- Buying, optimization, and plain-language reporting
- Naming with availability checks; voice and messaging guide
- Visual identity kit: type, color, and usage rules
03
The platform your store runs on
The part other agencies don't have. Orders, inventory, fulfillment, payments, CRM, client portals and campaign metrics wired into one modular dashboard — assembled around your real stack, in a single pane you log into. We build it and keep it working; your team runs the day-to-day in it. A tool, not a labor shop.
Typical work: a client portal, connecting your tools, one dashboard to run the store from.
What you get
- A modular, login-gated dashboard built around your stack
- One pane over the tools you already run — sales and operations, content and finance, wired in through our own integration engine (Conduit)
- Runs from any device — the dashboard is built mobile-first; a companion iOS and Android app is in development
- Custom software we build for you, launched with its own card right alongside it
- Revenue and margin tiles built from your actual numbers — provider-agnostic, so switching processors never breaks your reporting
- Your marketing numbers in the same pane as your operations, rather than in a monthly slide deck
- Live service status on the dashboard, and a monthly external security sweep
- We train your team to run it — and keep the system working
04
Software Development
Full-stack software: web apps, platforms, storefronts, internal tools, browser extensions, and interactive products. Launched from the same dashboard as the rest of the business — not a separate handoff you have to go find.
Typical work: a storefront, a web app or platform, an internal tool, an interactive product.
What you get
- Honest scoping with milestones — no black-box estimates
- Web apps, platforms, and storefronts, designed and deployed
- Browser extensions, API integrations, and internal tools
- Interactive products — 3D web experiences and browser tooling we've built and shipped
- A launch card on your dashboard, next to your orders and CRM
- Source and handoff docs for what we build for you — yours outright on final payment, so you're never hostage to us for the next change
05
Mobile Apps
Your own iOS and Android product, built native-feel from a first working prototype through store launch and the updates after — yours to ship under your brand.
Typical work: an MVP for the app stores, a companion app, a cross-platform rebuild.
What you get
- A working prototype and scope you can see before committing
- Cross-platform build — one codebase, both app stores
- App Store and Play Store submission and review handling
- Analytics, crash reporting, and post-launch iteration
06
Security & Compliance
A bounded audit and hardening engagement, not a compliance platform you pay for monthly and manage yourself. We lock down and keep clean the whole live surface — your store, your data, your email — and map you to the standards buyers ask about.
Typical work: a security audit + hardening, email authentication, a compliance readiness check.
What you get
- Security audit and hardening across the live web + database surface
- Email authentication (DMARC, SPF, DKIM) and anti-spoofing
- Compliance mapping — SOC 2, GDPR, PCI, HIPAA readiness
- A recurring monthly external security sweep — headers, TLS, exposure — reported by severity
What you can buy alone
Six practices, six separate invoices.
The most common question we get is whether the platform is a gate on everything else. It is not. Here is the whole answer in one table.
| Practice | Sold on its own? | How it is priced |
|---|---|---|
| 01 · SEO & AI search | Yes — this is the core | Audit up front, then a monthly retainer |
| 02 · Paid Media & Brand | Yes | Monthly retainer, or a one-off identity project |
| 03 · The platform your store runs on | Yes | Scoped build, then seats and packs |
| 04 · Software Development | Yes | Scoped project, milestone-billed |
| 05 · Mobile Apps | Yes | Scoped project, then post-launch iteration |
| 06 · Security & Compliance | Yes, as an add-on | Bounded audit, then an optional monthly sweep |
Published numbers for the search work live on the pricing page. Platform builds are scoped per company, because the honest number depends on what you already run.
Why one team
The build and the getting-found are one decision.
Whether an answer engine can read your product data is decided by how the page was built, not by anything written about it later. That is why these practices are one team and not a referral chain. Three public findings, each from the organization that ran the study:
- 1 · Fewer clicks come off the same result page. The Pew Research Center tracked 900 U.S. adults across 68,879 Google searches in March 2025 and found that users clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% of visits where none did. Users clicked a link inside the AI summary itself on just 1% of those visits.
- 2 · Being cited still runs through ranking. Semrush, studying 5,000 keywords and more than 150,000 citations, found Perplexity's cited domains overlap Google's organic top ten by more than 91%, and Google AI Overviews by roughly 86%. Google AI Mode is the outlier at roughly 54% domain overlap, which is why one engine is never the whole picture.
- 3 · Most companies cannot see their own stack. BetterCloud's 2026 State of SaaS report found that only 56% of the applications organizations use today carry IT approval, and that mid-market organizations went from an average of 116 apps to 164 in a single year. Adding a vendor is rarely the fix.
None of that says a vendor can promise you a ranking or an AI recommendation. It says the technical build, the search work and the AI-answer work are the same surface being read by different machines, and that splitting them across three companies puts the handoff exactly where the failures happen.
The way we work
Most projects touch more than one practice.
One team
One relationship, not four vendors
Take one thing or several — the growth work, a build, security. Each stands on its own, with its own scope and its own invoice. Run more than one with us and they share a single relationship instead of four: no repeated onboarding, no separate sales call, no extra vendor to chase.
Honest scope
You see the plan before the bill
We scope in the open: what it takes, what it costs, and what the first milestone looks like — before any commitment.
Handoff, day one
We train your team, then step back
The moment your team can run the platform, we say so — and stay only for what you still want us carrying. Not vendor lock-in dressed up as support.
Built to ship
Every build lands on your dashboard
We don't hand you a thing and walk away. What we build joins the platform your store already runs on — and if it's customer-facing, ships with the work to get it found.
Questions buyers ask
Frequently asked.
Can I buy one practice on its own, or do I have to take the platform?
Every one of the six practices is sold on its own, and the platform is not a gate on any of them. Most engagements start with the search and AI-search work, which is a complete engagement that needs nothing else from us; so is a software build, a mobile app, a brand identity, or a security audit. The platform is the thing we have that other agencies do not, and plenty of clients will never buy it. Each practice carries its own scope and its own invoice, and running two with us means one relationship rather than two vendors.
Why does one team build the software and also run the search work?
Because the two decisions are the same decision. Whether an AI answer engine can read your product data is settled by how the page was built, not by anything a marketer writes afterward. Semrush, in a study of 5,000 keywords and more than 150,000 citations, found that Perplexity's cited domains overlap Google's top-ten organic results by more than 91%, and its cited URLs by 82% — so the technical build, the classic search work, and the AI-answer work are not three jobs with handoffs between them. When they sit in different companies, the handoff is where the work goes missing.
Is SEO still worth funding now that AI answers exist?
Yes, and the evidence points the same way for both. The Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 U.S. adults across 68,879 Google searches in March 2025 and found users clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, against 15% of visits where none did. That is fewer clicks from the same page, which is the argument for being named inside the answer. It is not an argument for abandoning rankings, because the same Semrush study shows Google AI Overviews reuses roughly 86% of the domains already in the top ten. Ranking is now a precondition for being cited, not a substitute for it.
Do you promise a ranking, or that ChatGPT will recommend us?
No, and treat anyone who does as a liability. Answer engines return different results for the same question minutes apart, and no vendor controls what a model says. What Deadpan Labs commits to is the work and the measurement: the specific fixes, done, and a monthly panel of your buyers' real questions that records whether you were named, where, and who was named instead. The number you get is a direction over time, not a score with two decimal places.
What if we already have an agency or our own tools?
Then we integrate rather than replace. The SEO and GEO practice runs either done-for-you or wired into the tools and agencies you already pay for, with the measurement landing in the same place either way. This matters more than it sounds: BetterCloud's 2026 State of SaaS report found that only 56% of the applications organizations actually use carry IT approval. Adding a seventh vendor to an already unmanaged stack is usually the wrong move, so we would rather connect what you run than sell you another subscription.
What proof do you have that any of this works?
Deadpan Labs has no signed client work to point at, and we are not going to invent any. What we can show is first-party: we grew one of our own products from zero to more than 900 organic downloads with no ad spend, we run our own company on the same platform we sell, and we run the same monthly AI-visibility panels on our own brands that we would run on yours. That is a smaller receipt than a logo wall, and it is the one we actually have.
The close
Not sure which practice you need?
Most engagements touch more than one. Tell us about your store — we’ll scope the shortest path to getting it found.