Every Little Word
Website Design & Development
Background
When a business transforms from being a single freelancer into a thriving, robust company of many, they need to announce this change to the world in a way that precisely refocuses client expectations. In this situation, smart website design can do some incredibly heavy lifting for a brand.
Every Little Word is a content development and copywriting company that had found itself stepping out from under the umbrella of its owner’s name and into the spotlight as the excellence-driven, multi-colleague enterprise they had grown into being.
Though valued by their clients for the quality of their writing and their tenacity, the brand was running into roadblocks on their path to growth due to the fact that their new business was largely driven by referrals.
As much as they prized the steady word of mouth that connected them with new clients, they were looking to up their brand with a new level of professionalism and visibility to increase their outreach and convert their growth strategy from reactive to proactive.
We set out on a mission with our client to completely up their game from a simple contact page to a dynamic website that would grow their thought leadership and help them execute their growth strategy.
Style Tile
Every Little Word came to us with some branding elements already on board: a logo, an icon, and a color palette of bold fuchsia and teal.
To kick off the project, we created a style tile which extrapolated that branding into a visual scheme of components for the website. The style tile turned all the ideas from our discussions and creative research into a tangible design vision. This allowed our client to see the interplay of fonts, buttons, graphics, and styling we had planned for them, giving them the opportunity to provide feedback at an early stage in the design process and building their excitement for what was to come.
Shot List
Photography was going to be a cornerstone of the site’s aesthetic, so we supported our client in creating and obtaining the exact photos we knew the design would need to be successful. Since Every Little Word conducts all of their business remotely, creating a sense of space and atmosphere through brand photography was key. We helped them narrow down options for a space to rent for their branding photo shoot as well as choose a photographer to work with that had a perfect style for their brand.
In the comprehensive custom shot list guide we put together, we laid out shot-for-shot exactly what kinds of interactions, compositions, and brand-feel we wanted the photographer to capture. We described shots that would visually tell the story of the unique content interviewing method that Every Little Word uses to give its writing depth, quality, and relevance. We provided tips on wardrobe and decor that would help the details of every shot sing with the message of the brand and described ideal shots down to the focal point and depth of field.
We aren’t photographers–we leave that to the pros–but we know how we need our client’s photography to function on our end as part of a phenomenal site. Our shot list guide made it easy for our client and their photographer to get photos that would build an engrossing sense of place and brand-feel ambience.
Wireframes
Every Little Word needed their website to be actionable and lay a solid groundwork for how clients could start working with them. And since they’re a content company, they needed ideas to flow in the consistently fluid manner that their writing always does.
Wireframing empowered us to achieve all of the above on this project. During this phase, nailing down the visual layouts and blocking of a client’s content helps us get the placement of every concept exactly where it needs to be. In the final site design, buttons and calls to action punch through at the right places in the narrative to get potential clients to take the next steps, all thanks to the wireframe phase.
Website design is so much more than achieving a certain look; it’s organizing crucial information in an appropriate hierarchy, emphasizing the right points, and leading the user on a very specific journey through details you want them to take in—compelling them to do something. Wireframes allow us to build the informational and narrative flow of the site before applying the more intricate details of visual design, and thus make sure that what we want users to do is achievable.
Website Design
Every Little Word’s overall site aesthetic is one of clean layouts and blocks of soft color. The brand’s bold jewel tones are used sparingly to draw focus, as with the stylized drop shadows on images and buttons and use of magenta on actionable text. Brightened shades of these tones further highlight calls to action. Texture is minimalist with small triangular accents that balance each page’s visual architecture. Photo backgrounds and atmospheric b-roll of interiors help house the brand’s ideals in a grounded sense of place, creating the feeling of ideas made into reality.
In addition to the about page and services page that are de rigueur for any website, our website design includes a blog that allows Every Little Word a space to shine in its own medium, as well as team pages that help showcase the depth of expertise in the organization.
Since a goal for the website was to expand the brand beyond one person AND attract new team members for whom their message of excellence would resonate, we created a reusable template that will allow them to add new team members as their business expands.
Custom Icons
Our client loved our previous website projects where we had used illustrations and similar design elements to balance a brand’s professionalism with its personality. To build a sense of Every Little Word’s character in this way amidst the professional refinement evoked by our site design, we created a set of custom icons to tell little visual stories in pops of emphasis and charm. No boring marketing tropes here. Instead, linework icons of familiar business imagery with splashes of on-brand tones create a sense of fun amidst the familiar, without overstepping the laser-focused polish of the brand.
Every Little Word prides itself on creating content in their client’s voice but with a leveled-up degree of execution. Striking this balance in the site’s visual language walks the same line of “you, only better” that is the cornerstone of our client’s product: bringing out the best in the brands they write for by harnessing the perfect mix of professionalism and personality. The site, like our client, engages on an extremely professional level, with the moments of fun that shine through in our custom iconography giving a glimpse of how easy they are to work with.
Foundational SEO
To grow in new directions, Every Little Word needed to get its offerings in front of new eyes—and there’s no better way to do this than with rock-solid SEO. As with all of our website packages, we engineered our client’s site top to bottom to rank in the kinds of Google searches their target clientele would embark upon.
Built on a groundwork of our client’s smart research into keywords and competitors, all the best practices of optimization are integrated into the fabric of the site in a way that never interferes with the voice of the brand or comes off as in-your-face. We managed to pull this off all while adhering to principles of accessibility, applying relevant and vivid alt-text description for images that would also improve overall search engine ranking.
Additional Collateral
Creating a seamless brand experience is always our goal, even when we’re not part of the existing branding a website client comes to us with. We wanted to ensure that Every Little Word’s visual language extended beyond the web presence we developed for them, so we created a custom logo for their company newsletter. We also designed LinkedIn headers to help introduce this brand that was once a “freelancer with some helpers” as the living and breathing enterprise the world would soon know it as.
Thank you so much for all your beautiful work!
We are thrilled with the website and how well it represents our organization!
I look forward to working with you again in the future!
