Launched: How We Built A Website We Were Actually Proud Of
We are excited to announce that 38th Street Studios has recently undergone a complete website makeover. And — not gonna lie — we think it’s pretty sexy. We know what you’re thinking: “Ken, your website looks great. What’s your secret?”
Honestly? Our amazing team. Without their expertise, creativity, and hard work, none of this would have worked so seamlessly. Before I dive into our strategy behind the beautiful creation, I feel the spotlight should be swiveled over to them. It is no lie that this took blood, sweat, tears, and a few late nights. A big shout-out to the 38th Street Studios team for all they do!
As for the “secret sauce” in our strategy, it’s no secret that we learned from the pitfalls of our old website. When we began our journey, we were unsure of how or where 38th Street Studios would fit into the industry landscape — you could say we had an identity crisis. We knew we could offer specific services and expertise, but we weren’t really sure how to put the pieces together. As a young and budding start-up, we felt we had to peacock our way to the top. For us this meant “serious business talk,” sentences that were slightly confusing and convoluted, and a showcase of everything we do on the home page without a strategy or story. Our internal confusion ultimately resulted in us building a website that lacked direction and clarity. And we weren’t proud of it.
Then (sadly) we forgot about it, and focused more on our clients rather than giving our own domain the TLC it desperately needed.
This is common. Often times companies, especially agencies or startups such as ours, spend so much time and energy providing their clients with the best services and products possible that they forget to spend time building their own brand. It’s difficult to have an objective view; what you think is great might seem confusing to your clients.
This is exactly what happened to 38th Street Studios, which is why we finally decided to revamp our image and design a new website. We came together and recognized our website’s weaknesses, and worked to build one that accurately portrays our energy, our services, and our vision.
How We Did It
Here’s what our Director of Marketing Lauren Santee, had to say on the four key principles we chose to focus on when building our new website.
Identify Your Purpose
The first and most important aspect is to identify your purpose. Your entire website (navigation, design, content, etc.) should all be driven by this — so nailing down what you want your website to accomplish is key.
Rather than doing the work for us, our old website actually gave us more work. When clients visited the old website, they would immediately come back to us with more questions. The lack of purpose and intent of our old website confused potential clients, and we would have to take more time and effort to try and clearly define what we were offering them.
Thankfully, we’ve cleared up this communication bug. The purpose of our new website is to educate our visitors on the exact services we offer, as well as our skills, expertise, and knowledge in the industry.
By including individual service pages, posting regular content (such as this blog), and focusing on content that engages our users (which we did not have before), we are able to accurately portray and achieve our purpose, and educate our viewers by forcing them to insert themselves into our brand’s narrative.
And because the second purpose of our website was to grow our inbound leads, including call-to-actions was also a huge part of our strategy. We now have a way to prompt people to contact our team to learn more or request a quote — which is huge.
Communicate Your Message (Tell Your Story)
When it comes to communicating your message, content is everything. It’s important to think about the tone you want to take and what type of emotional response you want your users to have. This will ultimately drive the style and the purpose of your writing.
When communicating your message, it’s also important to fully embrace your brand and avoid portraying an image that doesn’t represent your brand or its beliefs. For example, on our old website we thought that the only way to be successful and build trust in this industry was with overly professional and serious language. It definitely did not fit our brand or style, not to mention us as individuals. So with our new website, we decided to embrace our youthful and relaxed energy by utilizing a more informal and laid-back vibe. And, because we are just being ourselves and making our website more appealing to read, our new site has already been much more successful in helping us reach our purpose.
Develop a Flow
Another important aspect to consider is how you want your website to naturally guide users, as well as the end action you want them to take. Do you want them to purchase a product? Contact you to learn more? Follow you on social media? All of the above? Developing a solid website flow is the number one way to make this happen.
On our home page, our core intent is front and center, followed by the services we offer, and ending with our portfolio. Like a story, it has a beginning (our purpose), a middle (what we offer), and an end (our final product). It goes without saying that following this structure is the easiest way to develop your brand’s storyline and flow.
Keep It On Brand
Last but not least, be sure to keep your website on brand. There’s nothing worse than visiting a website that does not represent the business, not to mention one that is completely off brand. Everything from the font, colors, logo usage, language style and verbiage should all be consistent with the look and feel you have chosen for your company.
The best way to keep everything on brand across all channels (social media, website, digital ads, print collateral, and so on) is to develop a style guide. We did this for our company just a few months ago and I have to say it has made developing assets and keeping everything consistent so much easier — especially if you have a large team with multiple members working on the same project.
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We hope you found these tips helpful for your website. Remembering the four major principles — Purpose, Story, Flow, and Brand — will bring you one step closer to developing a website you’re excited about. We know it did for our company.
