Whether you’re a brand, a busi­ness, or an agency, no busi­ness tool might be as vis­i­ble (and impor­tant) as your web­site. It’s a show­case for your work and your phi­los­o­phy – and also a cost-effi­cient way to increase leads and dri­ve recruit­ing efforts. But every few years, you have to start ask­ing some tough ques­tions about your site: How long has it been since the last update? Does it tell the right sto­ry? Does it meet cur­rent design and tech­nol­o­gy stan­dards? Is it time for a redesign?

If you want the truth, here it is: No project is as ter­ri­ble as your own web­site. If you’ve worked on one, you know how it goes :  too many opin­ions, too many ideas, nev­er enough time, nev­er enough focus. I’m not try­ing to start this post on a neg­a­tive note, but I fig­ured we should get that out of the way. Our new Struck site has been no dif­fer­ent. I won’t admit when we start­ed work­ing on it. I’ll sim­ply say that it’s long over­due and we’re incred­i­bly proud of the result. Our rein­vent­ed web­site is a giant leap for­ward. It’s a mod­ern site that show­cas­es our cre­ativ­i­ty along­side our strate­gic chops. In many ways, this new site is a reflec­tion of the changes that have hap­pened at our agency over the last four/five years. How, exact­ly, did we tack­le this chal­lenge? We iden­ti­fied a num­ber of strate­gic guardrails – and then devel­oped UX stan­dards and a visu­al approach with­in that frame­work. Here’s how it played out for us (along with a few thoughts on how you might lever­age a sim­i­lar process).

1. Tell The Right Stories

When our agency got off the ground near­ly 15 years ago, we spe­cial­ized in deliv­er­ing amaz­ing dig­i­tal and design solu­tions, but most­ly as a part­ner for big­ger agen­cies. But over the last five years, we’ve changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. We’re no longer a cre­ative pro­duc­tion shop, crank­ing out dozens of projects with big-agency part­ners around the world. We work direct­ly with some amaz­ing clients (Nick­elodeon, Jack in the Box, the Utah Office of Tourism) and our work reach­es far beyond dig­i­tal cam­paign exe­cu­tions. The struc­ture of our site need­ed to reflect that evo­lu­tion. So we did away with our end­less scroll of projects and the funky sort­ing mech­a­nism that let you see work based on cat­e­go­ry and indus­try cross-sec­tions (though the debate around this one still rages on). Instead, we’ve focused on five client nar­ra­tives  –  sto­ries that demon­strate our com­plete agency capa­bil­i­ties: strate­gic think­ing, cre­ative excel­lence, and long-term rela­tion­ships. Key take­away: Make sure you’re telling the right sto­ry. Your site should reflect your prin­ci­ples, val­ues, and poten­tial – whether you’re an agency, a brand, or a cre­ative pro­fes­sion­al work­ing on a port­fo­lio.

2. Give People A Reason To Remember You

All this seri­ous talk about strat­e­gy and long-term rela­tion­ships doesn’t mean we’ve lost our way. We’re still a cre­ative agency, dri­ven to make things that have nev­er been made before. The new site con­tains touch­es and flour­ish­es and illus­tra­tions galore. We designed and built a rotat­ing home­page mar­quee that allows our design­ers to give their own spin on a part of our process  – and to show what it means to Defy Log­ic through a spir­it of Greater Than. Each mar­quee tile is the work of a dif­fer­ent design­er or illus­tra­tor, brought to life by our in-house devel­op­ment team. Key take­away: Don’t for­get the details. The lit­tle sur­pris­es (micro-inter­ac­tions) are often what leave the biggest impact on your audi­ence.

3. Weave Your Culture Into Your Website

At one point in the process, we land­ed on a sim­ple con­sen­sus: if you have to make a video with “Cul­ture” in the title to show­case your cul­ture  –  well, maybe you’re doing it wrong. It’s a par­al­lel to the prin­ci­ple that if you have to tell every­one how cool you are, you def­i­nite­ly aren’t very cool. At the same time, our agency is a vibrant, cre­ative haven made spe­cial by all the peo­ple who choose to work here. We like each oth­er. We do weird things togeth­er. We fight for our, um, cul­ture. So, we tried to weave that spir­it through­out the entire site. More pho­tos of peo­ple doing what they do. More scrib­bles. Sharp­er lan­guage. But no “cul­ture” videos. Nev­er. Key take­away: Nev­er under­es­ti­mate the val­ue of human con­nec­tion. Peo­ple hire agen­cies (and buy prod­ucts) because of real, emo­tion­al con­nec­tions. There’s no bet­ter way to con­nect than with a face.

4. Go Behind The Scenes

We love it when our favorite artists and design­ers pull back the cur­tain. We’re hop­ing to do the same. Our web­site has more works in progress, more sketch­es, and more rough drafts – in our client nar­ra­tives and also on our social chan­nels. We’re big Aaron Draplin fans and the video of his 15-minute logo chal­lenge is amaz­ing. So is the screen-cap­ture process of DKNG Stu­dios’ Explo­sions in the Sky poster. That’s a high bar. We’re aim­ing for it. We’ve built process tiles into our client nar­ra­tive struc­ture. Now we just need to make sure we fill them with some­thing awe­some. Key take­away: How you arrived at the solu­tion is often as com­pelling as the solu­tion itself. Also, it demon­strates your process and a com­mit­ment to your craft.

5. Use Technology To Your Advantage

We killed our blog. Yep. Killed it. Why? Because no one was read­ing it. A quick peek at our Google Ana­lyt­ics revealed that blog traf­fic was a micro­scop­ic per­cent­age of the views/reads/recommends/shares we were get­ting on Medi­um. So the blog was gone. But that doesn’t mean we’ve giv­en up. We replaced it with some­thing we call Today-ish, a snap­shot of our most cur­rent con­tent on each of our favorite plat­forms. Long-form writ­ing from Medi­um. Images and short videos from Insta­gram. Semi-coher­ent ram­blings from Twit­ter. Videos and case stud­ies on Vimeo. We even archived most of our lega­cy projects on Behance. It’s a won­der­ful world, right? Our site doesn’t have to do all of these things. We can use spe­cial­ized plat­forms and then aggre­gate the high­lights. For those who want to see every sin­gle thing we’re saying/seeing/recording/writing, there’s even a com­pre­hen­sive aggre­gate we call Every­thing-ish. Key take­away: Be smart. You don’t have to build every­thing from scratch. Smart busi­ness­es know how, when and where to lever­age exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy. It’s a skill that your clients should appre­ci­ate.

6. Iterate & Evolve

We could’ve spent anoth­er year pol­ish­ing and refin­ing the site. But we decid­ed to prac­tice what we preach (iter­a­tion!) and we launched. Is the new site per­fect? Of course not. Noth­ing on the Inter­net is (except maybe this). So we’ll keep evolv­ing. We’ll add new client nar­ra­tives. We’ll clean up our mess­es. And, as it all hap­pens, we’ll prob­a­bly change our minds a few times. Because that’s what we do. Key take­away: Things don’t have to be per­fect when you launch. Estab­lish your own def­i­n­i­tion of a min­i­mum viable prod­uct (MVP) and go from there. Keep at it. Plan time for improve­ments and hot fix­es.