Last week, we unveiled our newly redesigned website! And today, we’re taking you behind the scenes of our redesign process.
We approached our website redesign in the same way we work with our clients on enhancing or redesigning their websites. We start with a tone test to get an idea of the tone they want to adopt (casual? formal?) and get a consensus from the internal team. And then, we clarify the specific goals and expectations for the site.
We wanted our tone to be approachable and conversational … just like us! So we kept the pacing energetic and the copy upbeat. You can see an example of this on our Services page and in our updated Mission and Values.
One of our biggest goals is to continue creating regular blog/newsletter content. This allows us to consistently nurture our relationship with our existing audience and provide relevant, fresh blog content on our website for new visitors. We also clarified that one of our annual goals is to keep our website updated with more extensive content a few times a year on our Free Resources page. We updated all of the branding on our resources so that our resources are consistent with our new look.
Just as we recommend that our clients highlight the people they help on their websites, we take great pride in sharing the many communities and organizations we work with. Those can be found on our Case Studies and Clients pages.
Clarifying our goals also helped us to make choices about what we wouldn’t carry over to our new site. This included our online store, which had video trainings, templates, and more. We decided to put the store on hold for now to focus on other goals. (If you miss it, let us know!)
Keeping with our approachable tone, we wanted to show some of the personalities of each team member. Our About Page includes team bios that have our professional background and accomplishments, individual contact information, and some fun “trivia” like…
- Sophie’s favorite part of her job: Asking questions. Listening to others and their stories. Constantly learning new things. Helping make dreams into reality.
- Meg’s professional superpower: Run-on sentence slaying!
- Ellen’s favorite things: Her dog, Lumi; The Great British Baking Show; fall colors; hiking adventures; attending live sports (hockey and football); wine tastings; chocolate.
- Sandy’s personal superpowers: Making friends everywhere she goes.
Once we identified the story we wanted to tell about PPR Strategies, the team at Octavo told the story visually and made sure the site had top-notch responsiveness on the back-end.
It’s not just one of these factors that makes your website stand out to first-time and returning visitors – it’s all of these elements combined.
If you’re ready to explore what story you’d like to tell on an enhanced or new website, contact us to set up a free 15-minute consultation.
‘Til next time,
Sandy
