Rebuilding our own site: what we kept, what we cut, and why

We rebuild brands for other people. This year we rebuilt our own. Most of what follows is what we would say to a client in the same position. The difference is that we had to take our own advice, which is harder than giving it.

The situation

The company had changed and the site had not. We started as a public relations and entertainment marketing business. We now ship software, run digital growth for brands, and build products for founders. The old site said the first part well and the rest as an afterthought. Prospects who found us for technology work had to be told, on a call, what the site should have told them.

There was also the ordinary accumulation that every site suffers. Sections added for a reason nobody remembered. Three different text sizes for the same kind of paragraph. A page that explained the process in six steps, which read well and moved nothing.

The decision

The first question was refresh or rebrand. The test we use with clients is simple. If the one-page positioning is still true, refresh. If it is not, rebrand. Ours was no longer true. So the work started with the page, not the design.

What we did first

The sentence. One team for public relations, entertainment marketing, digital growth and technology, so nothing gets lost in the handover. Everything on the new site is an expression of that line. If a section could not be traced back to it, it did not survive.

Three words. Identity, innovation, influence. They are what we do for a brand, in the order a brand needs them. They became the first thing a visitor sees, one at a time, because a visitor can hold one word in their head and not three.

Who it is for. Films, brands, founders and technology companies. Named plainly on the page, so the people we work for recognise themselves and the people we do not work for move on without wasting anyone's time.

What we cut

• The six-step process section. It was handsome. It told a prospect nothing they would act on. The sequence is now a single band that moves as you scroll, and it is shorter than the section it replaced.
• The engagement tiers. Pricing pages invite comparison on price, which is the one thing we do not want to compete on. The conversation about engagement happens in a conversation.
• Decorative illustration that did not say anything. Every image on the new site is drawn in one style and means something about the work it sits next to.

What we kept

The name. The mark. The testimonials, because they are the only part of a site a prospect fully believes. The journal, because a point of view, made consistently, is worth more than a volume of content. And the plain reporting line, including the months that miss, because it is the sentence clients quote back to us most.

What we added

A light and a dark mode, because the people who visit at night asked. One body text size across the whole site, because inconsistency reads as carelessness even when nobody can name it. Our own work in motion, pulled from the channels where it already lives. And a hero that shows the thing the sentence describes, one team at the centre, reaching every channel, one signal at a time.

The things we argued about

Whether to show prices. One side said transparency wins trust. The other said a price without a conversation invites the wrong comparison. The second side won, and the section went. Whether to keep the long process section. It had taken effort and it looked the part. It went, because a prospect reading it learned nothing they would act on. Whether the hero should say one word or three. One word won, shown one at a time, because the page is read on a phone more often than on a desk.

None of these were design arguments. They were arguments about what we wanted a visitor to believe, which is where the arguments should be.

What we measure now

The same things we ask clients to measure. Whether the right people arrive, which we see from where they come from and what they look at. Whether they understand us, which we see from how far they read and whether they reach the contact page. Whether they act, which is the enquiry. One page, once a month, including the months that miss. A site is never finished. It is reported on.

What it was like to be the client

Slower than we expected and for the reason we warn clients about. The positioning conversation took longer than the design. We argued about the sentence for days and about the colours for an hour. That is the right ratio. It is also the one every client tries to invert.

We also did what we tell clients not to do. We shipped a section, looked at it, and removed it the same day. Twice. The lesson is not that we should have planned better. It is that being willing to cut your own work is the only way to end up with a site that says one thing.

What we would tell anyone about to do this

Write the page before you call a designer. Decide what you are cutting before you decide what you are adding. Keep the things people already believe about you. Treat the logo as the last decision, not the first. And budget more time for agreeing what you stand for than for drawing it. The drawing is the easy part. It always was.