Switch Mobile
How a startup wireless carrier launched a working plans, activation, and line-management platform with Rocketship, then turned on the marketing engine.
16
purchase and activation scenarios, documented end to end
Overview
Switch Mobile is a no-contract wireless carrier promising wireless that pays it forward. This means no contracts, no credit checks, and plans start at $25 a month. But a website alone wouldn’t have let them sell a single line. Switch Mobile needed everything a customer touches to buy phone service: plans, activation, SIM and eSIM provisioning, line management, billing, and the carrier integration underneath it.
Rocketship designed, built, tested, and launched that platform, and we stayed on as the development and marketing partner.
The challenge: a carrier with no storefront
Switch Mobile was a startup with a carrier agreement and no storefront. We still had to build every piece of the customer experience, including how someone picks a plan, brings their own device or buys one, activates a physical SIM or an eSIM, adds a line to a family plan, and manages it all afterward.
Underneath sat Telgoo5, the carrier API layer that handles billing and line management, and the site had to talk to it directly.
Because this was a real carrier, a small bug in the activation flow would mean a customer who paid for the service but couldn’t use it.
Most agencies would have scoped a marketing site and pointed the “Sign up” button at the carrier’s default portal. That would have put Switch Mobile’s brand on the front door and someone else’s experience behind it.
The approach: build the ability to sell, then build the demand
Switch Mobile’s website would be the product itself, a decision that shaped everything afterwards.
That meant owning the purchase and activation flow ourselves instead of handing customers off to the carrier portal, designing for the messy real cases (like a customer who has one single line and one family plan and wants to merge them), and building the backend integration so the site could create, bill, and manage lines directly through Telgoo5.
Our web design and development work stopped looking like web design; it was closer to building a small telecom operations system with a brand on top.
Today we run monthly reviews against the goal of fewer than 20% of the first 100 customers needing to contact support to get started.
01
Plans and activation
Three plan tiers (Pay As You Go, Unlimited, and Family plans), bring-your-own-device support, and separate activation flows for eSIM and physical SIM. A customer can now buy a phone from the catalog, with live inventory and pricing synced from the device supplier, or activate the phone already in their pocket.
02
Line management
A customer dashboard called My Lines & Plan: every line with its plan, SIM type, number, device, and status. Customers can add a line to a family plan, toggle auto-renewal, and see data usage. Accounts that grow past ten lines are handled as enterprise overflow.
03
Carrier integration
Direct integration with Telgoo5 for billing and line management, so the site is the system of record for orders placed on switchmobile.com.
04
Blind testing
Before launch we ran blind user testing on the purchase flow, where a tester hit a real activation bug. We fixed it before a paying customer ever saw it.
05
Living documentation
An interactive process map documents every purchase scenario the site supports (16 of them), showing who acts, what the system calls, which emails fire, and where it lives in code. When the site changes, the map changes.
06
Launch marketing
Once the platform was live we added SEO as a formal ongoing scope, built Google Ads from scratch, deployed Amazon Prime TV ads through TrustedTV, and confirmed GA4 tracking end to end.
The results
Switch Mobile launched as a working carrier. Customers pick a plan, activate a SIM or eSIM, add lines, and manage their accounts on a platform Rocketship built, tested, and continues to support.
In September 2026, impressions rose 41% in the second half of the month versus the first, average ranking position improved from 12.4 to 10.0, and seven new keywords entered the top three. Site health scored 85 out of 100, and the site passed crawlability checks for ChatGPT, OpenAI, Googlebot, and Google Extended, so AI assistants can read and cite it.
One caveat: almost all of those clicks are still brand searches, which is normal for a startup in its first months. The ability to sell exists, it works, and the measurement is wired in so the traffic chart can come later.
41%
search impressions
in the second half of the month versus the first
12.4 to 10.0
average position
September 2026
Seven
new keywords in the top three
September 2026
85 out of 100
site health
September 2026
What this means for you
If your product needs a transaction, an activation, or an account behind it, a marketing site is the wrong scope. You will spend the launch budget on the part customers see and have nothing behind it when they try to buy.
Get this right and your website becomes the product your customers use every day. You own the experience, see every step in your own analytics, and can fix what breaks without waiting on a vendor.
Skip it and the brand looks great, the “Sign up” button leads somewhere generic, and your customers’ first impression is someone else’s software.
Scope the website as the sales engine, build the integrations that make the transaction real, test with people who have never seen it, and only then turn on the ads.
Questions buyers ask about this work
What does it mean to treat a website as a sales platform instead of a marketing site?
It means the site handles the transaction itself: choosing, paying, activating, and managing the product. A marketing site describes the product and hands the customer off elsewhere to buy.
Can WordPress handle a real ecommerce and activation flow?
Yes, with custom development. Switch Mobile’s plans, checkout, SIM and eSIM activation, and customer dashboard all run on a custom WordPress build integrated with the carrier’s API.
Why run blind user testing before launch?
Because the people who built the flow can’t see it fresh. A tester who has never seen the site caught a real activation bug for Switch Mobile before any customer did.
When should a startup turn on paid ads?
After the purchase flow is proven and tracking is confirmed. Switch Mobile launched Google Ads and Amazon Prime TV ads only after the platform was live and GA4 was verified end to end.
How long does SEO take for a brand-new domain?
Plan for six to nine months before non-branded search carries real weight. Early wins show up as impressions and rankings first, then clicks.
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