As a digital marketing agency, Seventh Scout has created award-winning websites since 2017. Our team is small, and our client roster is curated. We excel in supporting our clients by aligning all of their digital assets (websites, social media channels, emails, videos, photography, ebooks, webinars, and more) to connect prospects and clients with their brand. Humanizing these channels by highlighting leadership, culture, work, and play in original content is a powerful and successful combination supported by data-driven analytics.
However, as a small business, our own website always seemed to take a back seat to our client’s work. When our team slowed down and observed our own website, we were immediately struck that we were not practicing what we were preaching. There are lots of challenges when it comes to building your own website. The easy answer is to go with the old “the cobbler’s children have no shoes” adage, which is undoubtedly true. Most of our team’s energy and efforts are focused on meeting the needs of our clients, which means their websites, messaging, and materials take top priority. But we didn’t let this stop us from embarking on redesigning our website to showcase the human side of our team and services.
Putting ‘Scout’ Back in Seventh Scout
Our old website was definitely beginning to show its age. While we’re not an “old” agency by any measure, the previous website was quickly designed and built during a period of leadership and ownership transition. Upon reflection, the website had a bit of an identity crisis. As an agency, Seventh Scout was continuing to evolve, fine-tuning and focusing our services, approach, and methodology. We wanted our website to be an authentic representation of our agency today.
Previous Seventh Scout Website
The easiest ways to approach this project would’ve been to copycat other agency websites or create a website that told an aspirational, utopic version of who and what Seventh Scout is. Weekly meetings over a series of months really helped us hone our vision of the website and allowed us to focus on what makes Seventh Scout unique.
Creating the time and space to slow down and work on our own website was definitely a challenge, but the process of doing so was enlightening and enjoyable. Our team vigorously discussed our collective vision for the agency’s website. I see each of our fingerprints all over the site, and that really brings me joy.
One of the first things people notice about the visual design of the Seventh Scout website is the hand-drawn arrows, lines, and elements. We’re a team of prolific note-takers, and these graphic details represent the personalized and iterative approach we take in our work. The final step of our agency’s process, “The Path of the Seventh Scout,” is Optimize, which really isn’t a “final” step at all – it’s a commitment and a mandate to constantly evaluate and measure the performance and impact of our work.
The Swiss army knife on our Services page is another visual metaphor for an essential aspect of our agency. We may not offer every service imaginable, but we do provide a lot of unique and distinct services. Some of our clients utilize one or two of our services, while others enjoy all of our services. Regardless, the comprehensive and multi-faceted utility we provide is something that all of our clients benefit from.
Once the Seventh Scout-unique visual elements were designed, our team wanted to take it one step further, incorporating “scrollytelling” into the website development process. By creating an immersive user experience by integrating animation into visual assets and custom CSS.
As demonstrated throughout this case study, the simple element animations used have a positive impact on the user experience. Encouraging readers to connect with the content they are exploring.
We live in a three-dimensional world, and our team wants to share content that reflects that. While our screens are technically 2D, we can incorporate movement and color into our website. As a user, you can feel the character of the brand thanks to these tools. Scrollytelling makes consuming online content fun.
We understand that we’re a small boutique agency, and we realize we’re not the right team for every potential client. Our website must tell an honest, authentic story of who we are and what we do. Even though we have a broad network of partners who provide a deep bench of specific expertise that can be brought when the project calls for their contributions, our in-house team is small. But we’re savvy, scrappy, and smart. It was important to us to be honest about that because we’re proud of our team and their individual areas of expertise. I think our secret sauce is the way that we collaborate – seamlessly bringing our individual backgrounds, talents, and approaches together to meet the needs of our clients. Every account gets the “A-team.”
Seventh Scout’s services are a direct reflection of our team’s multidisciplinary talents and knowledge. Each of us wears several hats, and that’s a big reason why we’re able to deliver a lot of value to our clients from our small and nimble team. The Services section of our website was something we put a lot of time, effort, and thought into to ensure we were providing an authentic and honest description of what we do, what makes us unique, and what our clients should expect from our services.
Our new website reflects our motto, "Be nice, make better". With a clear and friendly experience we present our expertise, services and valuable content to all our current and future clients as well as to visitors who want to read and learn more about marketing in our Scout Journal.
Current Seventh Scout Website
Redesigning our own website gave me a lot of empathy in what our clients go through when we redesign their websites. For me, it is so much easier to share about our clients and their work and yet difficult and humbling to bring action and services to life. The end result was a more reflective and refined website highlighting our core services and featuring our team. We humanized our brand…something we do for our clients on a daily basis.
Telling Our Story
The new Seventh Scout website showcases our teams’ skills and services at a level that reflects the high-quality results all our clients receive in our partnerships together. From sharing a more concise menu of services to the visual power of exploring web development.
By humanizing our website and creating content that resonates with our audience and is more friendly, we are seeing the impact that is having on lead generation. Improving our website content also gave us more opportunities for promotion to send our audience back to our website, which now has more engaging and impactful content.
Better relay service offerings to potential clients. Since our website relaunch, traffic significantly increased on our service pages.
The contact page is a top ten trafficked page. Accomplishing the goal of generating more leads.
Incorporate “scrollytelling” and visual design elements, creating more meaningful content for our audience.
In all, our website reflects who our team members are and the results you can expect from our partnership. We encourage you to explore our website and engage with the animated visual “scrollytelling” elements used throughout our website.
