How a Digital Marketing Agency Rebuilt their Website
A website redesign project is my favourite kind of project. Design is subjective. So we help clients to see that they can have a better version of their brands. We’ll work on the existing website, spice up the design, and execute the development.
In the beginning, the client will get the questionnaire. We do branding creation based on their answers. Then our designer will make the initial design. This includes brand guidelines and other marketing materials. After the approval, we continue finishing the master design.
I’ll tell you about the redesign project more in another post. About the process and the techniques. What I want to tell you now is about the redesign that we do for our website.
The Backstory
Back in 2018, we secured the domain sab.id. We use sinergiantarbenua.com from day one we started the business. It was something big for us to purchase and use a premium 3 characters domain. We believe it can boost up our branding and credibility. The excitement sparked only in a quick burst because after that we were too busy with the clients’ projects. We got no time to build our own home.
After some struggle of splitting the work and spare the time for the development, we finally launched the website with the new domain on 1st of May 2019. We went full HTML. The aim was to have a super light website.
We started getting visitors. The SEO worked. No paid ads, only organic. Today we get more than 35k visitors per month and it keeps growing. The key is to have deep research for keywords and deliberately optimize the pages on the website. The referrals and backlinks will follow, especially if you post high-quality articles.
The time goes on and the website runs. We get inquiries through it. The page loads fast, and it fulfils its purpose. Though I know the site should convert more. Despite high traffic, we got a too low conversion. For the business target, the site must get more incoming message, more calls, more emails and closing at the end.
After some audits and learning, I realized we need to work on two major things: the design and the copy.
The design. Attractive, yet easy to use.
For the design, I didn’t go to awwwards anymore to find inspirations. Instead, I listed down the goal of what I want to achieve from the website. It must have a fresher look, can display our portfolios well, and it can capture the potential leads.
We need to be braver with the colour. The existing one was too blueish. So we mixed the blue with the touch of bright yellow and green. The combination works and we love this new colour scheme.
A solid portfolio page is what we need next. I once read a post from Chris Do that you have to only display three of your best works. I listed down around 17 out of over 100 works we’ve done and ask the designer to pick three. He gave up and told me he needs to choose 9. It’s better for the design too, because it’ll make the whole surface fuller. I agree and the process continued.
Now we want to place the funnel section where we can capture our potential clients. I had sub-domains for our sales funnels, such as SEO, branding, PPC and else. But now I want to integrate this into the main website. So when the visitor browses to the sub-service page, they’ll find the offering from us (PDF as a lead magnet) and forms for the data input. I got all the content from Funnel Packs. We are their customer since day 1 and we love to be part of their supporting community.
Overall, I’m excited about the final output! The designer tackled the tasks neatly. And he makes us confident selling our service with this website.
The Copy. Clarity will Convert.
For the copy, I recently read the book Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller and was so inspired by it. I learned the composition of making an engaging story and how to get clear with your message.
Copywriting is an art. And If you want to be effective at selling something, don’t get cute with it.
The framework is simple. He explains that every interesting story has a common pattern of how they built.
So I spent some time to create the storyboard. I write and rewrite. I position myself as someone who may in need of our service. I use Make My Persona by Hubspot to help me create the character. The scenarios we could run to help them and how the ideal situation should be at the end of the project. I got the support from a copywriter who unfortunately hasn’t read that book yet. But even so, he could deliver well and gave me the supply of inspiration.
We changed a lot of our current copy. Unclear terms such as “Level up your Brand — Excel your Business” changed to “Supercharge your Business”. Or from “We provide specific skills to serve you to grow in this digital era.” to “Digital marketing is great. We do it for you.”.
We were facing a lot of work for this process since the pages have grown from under 10 to almost 40 pages. But an attractive design we have makes it easier for us crafting the words.
And after almost 3 months of work, we went live last Sunday. It was a spontaneous decision on that midnight when I was back and forth checking the pages. I learned that most of the time my perfectionism hindered me to get the big goal that I’ve set. So I pushed this redesign project, and now it’s online.
By this post, I want to give you an idea of how a digital marketing agency that makes websites for businesses, building one for themselves. The internal battle about priority and idealism. And about the importance of upgrading your skills to level up yourself and be beneficial for the business.
About the Author
Tri Lastiko is the founder of SAB, a digital marketing agency based in Jakarta. He also a consultant, entrepreneur, and content creator.
Follow him everywhere @trilastiko
