THE CARRERA AGENCY CASE STUDY
BRAND DEVELOPMENT • WEBSITE REDESIGN
There’s a reason the time worn phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” continues to survive. In many cases, it’s dead right. Do you really need the newest iPhone the moment it’s released? Your current one probably works perfectly fine for all the tasks you do on a daily basis. The same could be said for myriad other products.
But what about your website? If business is strong and steady, who cares if your website looks dated? This is where the APPLICABILITY of our old adage gets rather opaque. It’s true. It’s not broken. Business is good. So how do you know when to pull the trigger? The answer: At the first sign of a leak. You can’t wait for the whole dam to break, or the whole roof to cave in. You need to get in there and fix it before your competition steals your market share when you aren’t looking.
The Carrera Agency (TCA), a leader in the technology consulting space, found itself precisely at this crossroads. Business was clipping along at an enviable rate. Growth curves were beating the pro forma. Clients, employees, and owners were happy. Why redesign the website? Because the drip, drip, drip of the first leaks were becoming audible.
The old website was visually appealing, but loaded with Flash*. If you don’t play in the design sandbox, you may not know that using a Flash movie for your entire website is a big no-no today. The infamous Mr. Steve Jobs essentially wrote Flash’s epitaph when he declared that the iPhone and iPad products would not support Flash. Period. RIP.
Google piled on in 2015 when it announced that it would demote websites that were not responsive – i.e. that are not mobile friendly. It would drop them in its organic search ranking, making it less likely that a non-responsive site would be displayed in its search results. Splash. Another leak.
Rolling Out Mobile Friendly Update
Time to fix the roof.
As always, we started with discovery – an intensive period of listening, questioning, and interviewing to understand the culture of the company, its clients, and where it was headed in the future.
TCA was one of the first consulting agencies to refer to technical personnel as talent. It takes the time to interview, vet, and handpick the right person for the right role, and it views those who survive this vetting as talent. Because they are. As the space has become more crowded over the years, it became apparent that along with building a Flash-free, responsive website, it needed to more effectively reflect who TCA is – to tell its story – to differentiate it from its competitors.
We refreshed the TCA logo to give it a cleaner sharper look, thus better reflecting the industry in which it plays. In addition, we developed a new strap line that spoke inspiringly to both end-clients and those being placed: “The Right People for the Right Projects, That’s Talent Management”
Head of Photography Georgia Gregory visually documented the team. She elected to do this outdoors, which aided in getting the camera-shy group comfortable in front of the lens.
The new website features large hero images of people because that’s what TCA does best: people. It elicits a sense of the small, handcrafted experience that comes with working with TCA, along with the collegiality and respect of its customers and clients.
Flash gone? Check. Responsive for mobile? Check.
The culture of TCA reflected in the user interface and user experience? Check. Leaks staunched. Strong roof overhead.
*Flash is an Adobe product that was very popular in website design to provide animated graphics and video content. Jobs deemed it a memory and processing hog, as well as a potential entry site for security breaches.