Looking in the Digital Mirror: How Trueline Took Its Web Design to the Next Level

In 2018, after months of hard work, we launched a new website. It was beautiful. It was easy to navigate. There was even a “Team” page with headshots of everyone on our staff. It laid out exactly what we do. So we pretty much left it alone. Then we went away for a long weekend and came back and—just like that—the thing was outdated.

We’re a full-service marketing and branding agency, and we get busy. One issue was we were so focused on creating innovative solutions for our clients—web design, business consulting, social-media management and so on—that time got away from us. In short, we grew complacent.

The result? Our website still looked great (at first glance, anyway), but it didn’t really capture who we’d become.

On a more granular level, we weren’t taking our own advice when it came to staying compatible with the latest Web Standards*. Our search-engine optimization (SEO) was lacking. We weren’t clear about how potential clients should contact us. More importantly, we weren’t giving visitors the kind of user experience that would keep them on the page.

It was time to look in the mirror.

The fix

We broke our website overhaul into three buckets: Design, Development and Analytics.

On the Design front, we created a homepage that used large images in a slider format to showcase our marketing and branding work—while also using our company culture as a recruiting tool.

We also included customized calls to action (CTAs) for each of our offerings: one set for our publishing arm; another for our digital marketing services. You get the idea. Finally, we added case studies to our homepage, ensuring that our most successful partnerships and projects were front and center. 

Codes, clicks and content

Once we nailed down the design, we dove into website’s architecture—the backend that makes it easy to use. Using WordPress as the content-management system (CMS), we built a mobile-first template to improve ease-of-use for our team, making the content-editing process easier than ever.

Rather than simply show the work we’ve done (and for whom), we overhauled our Case Studies page to tell the story behind the project—and how it helped our client.

Other improvements include updating our Google Analytics code to better gauge our audience and including more cross-linking (when you link from one page to another on your site).

The results are in

It’ll take months to fully assess the impact of our redesign. Still, the signs are promising. We’ve:

• Improved our Google PageSpeed Ranking from 19 (not good) to 85 (very good!).
• Reduced our bounce rate by 17%.
• Generated a 21% increase in time spent on-site, and a 45% increase in pages per session.

Looking for more than just numbers? Let’s hear what some Trueline employees had to say.

“I didn’t realize how slow the old site was until I saw the new one.”
– Brandon Bagley, Internal Support Coordinator

“It’s so much more intuitive. Whether you’re on a desktop or scrolling your phone, you can easily find what you’re looking for.”
– Mary Raitt Jordan, Writer

“Overall the design feels a lot more cohesive and put together.”
– Amy Nimon, Designer

“The employee headshots need more lasers.” 
– Everyone

But enough about us

Did some of this hit a little too close to home? Whatever the issue(s) currently plaguing your website, we have the expertise to help you get things back on track. Sometimes all you need is a second set of eyes. Sometimes you need a lot more. We’ve got you covered, so drop us a line to book a free consultation.

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