One Process, Diverse Industry Websites
Rob Seas Content Strategist/Copywriter
Your website is often the first and most important touchpoint customers have with your brand and business. It needs to do the heavy lifting of conveying the tone and tenor of your brand while seamlessly facilitating the customer journey for current and prospective customers. Next to social media, it’s your most valuable digital asset.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to business websites. What might work for one industry decidedly will not work for another. Audience sensibilities are critical as are business goals and aspirations. Does the site merely need to attract and educate customers or will selling and transactions happen online? What type of website is right for your business?
Our Industry-agnostic Design Process
Over the years, Kinetic has developed and honed an effective process to deliver beautiful custom websites for an exceptionally broad range of industries. Our resident UX expert Kelsea Schreiner recently presented an internal “lunch and learn” session to review our web development process.
Kinetic’s process consists of five phases: kickoff, discovery, elaboration, development and QA, testing and launch. Each phase features clear activities and deliverables that build on previous phases. Throughout the process, project needs such as content, design, UX and technology are defined, refined and shaped by input from both the client and the creative team.
The questions asked during discovery have an outsized impact on shaping subsequent phases as well as the final site, so it’s worth the extra time to explore them thoughtfully. They focus largely on the target audience and subjective aspects of the design and function.
Target Audience
- Which customer personas will be the primary use of the website?
- What is the desired outcome for these users? (brand validation, show available products, etc.)
- Are there any secondary audiences?
Design / Function
- Any specific wants/hopes for the new site?
- Are there any sites you like or admire?
- Are there websites that accomplish what you want your site to do for customers?
- Are there specific site functionality or features that you would like to include or avoid?
The Result
The end result of this process is much more than a website. It’s a digital home for your brand that is optimized for your audience and industry. We dig deep into who you are and what you do to create a website that speaks to customers using the latest in user experience, coding and design best practices. We make it our business to stay at the forefront of the industry when it comes to translating your brand message into a website that accomplishes all of the goals you set forth. Our holistic approach integrates the elements of SEO, quality design, user experience, bulletproof coding, high-impact visual media and expertly written copy into a digital property that will serve your needs now and grow with your organization for years to come.
Portfolio
Below are just a few examples from some of the diverse businesses we have worked with recently to create unique and compelling websites.
Ikigai Technologies
We didn’t know much about the blockchain before working with Seattle-based Ikigai but got up to speed quickly on the Web 3.0 ecosystem, tech stacks and the expanding frontiers of the blockchain space. We’re not exactly “crypto bros” yet, but we developed new knowledge and a keen interest in this hot new market.
Ikigai (pronounced “ee-kee-guy”) is a Japanese concept at the heart of their company. It means one’s “path to life fulfillment,” which in principle is the convergence of one’s personal passions, beliefs, values and vocation. Their mission, or ikigai, is to create tools to facilitate Web3 adoption into real world solutions that empower others to live according to their own passions.
Our team embraced this aspirational ethos, writing content that focused on their team’s fundamental disillusionment with Big Tech and vision of creating decentralized technology that holds entities accountable, welcomes collaboration and empowers people to build their dream. The graphic design features subtle Japanese cultural elements as well as extensive white space to give these lofty ideas and goals room to breathe.
Billings Chamber of Commerce DEI Network
This local government website was designed with the goal of creating a modern, professional website to showcase the Billings Chamber’s new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) program. After Kinetic completed the branding, we got to work building a website to introduce the community to the Chamber’s diversity, equity and inclusivity work and the mindset behind the initiative, which empowers local businesses to act as change agents as they seek ways to get ahead in a competitive environment. The site provides tools to help businesses be purposefully inviting to people of all backgrounds.
The new website forms a cohesive expression of DEI brand messaging and visuals through the colorful design and open tone and tenor of the writing. It validates brand legitimacy and provides the business community with a diversity toolkit and other valuable resources. The website will continue to serve as a digital showcase for the DEI brand, giving the Chamber an online presence for interested community members.
High Mountain Dispensary
OK, maybe we did know a bit about cannabis before working with High Mountain, but clearly not as much as we thought. We were soon immersed in a new world of terpenes, trichomes and calyx containers. We worked closely with High Mountain’s team to develop a website to match their lifestyle recreational marijuana brand and boutique dispensary. And we do mean “boutique”… the website needed to capture the uber-professional fit, finish and feel of their new dispensary, which has a lot more in common with an Apple Store than with the double wide pot shops that proliferated after recreational legalization in Montana.
Through inspirational graphic design and thoughtful writing, the new High Mountain website conveys the sense of adventure their brand invokes as well their mission to educate and elevate recreational marijuana culture. The site features an intuitive UX with just the right amount of animation to help users find exactly what they’re looking for even after they’ve sampled their last purchase.
Blue Sky Construction
Few industries match the grit and determination of the energy sector in the West. Customers in the oil and gas industry want a “get the job done” kind of partner. Blue Sky is a trusted contractor in the energy industry, offering a range of project management and construction services for small to large-scale projects, including pipeline construction, pipeline maintenance, stations, processing facilities and plants.
They turned to Kinetic to develop a website that reflects the breadth of their capabilities as well as their rock-solid reputation within the industry. Kinetic developed site architecture and design concepts that created a hierarchy to convey this message while providing more detail a click or two down on their safety record, diverse services and more than a dozen recent Blue Sky projects. The result is a visually compelling, easily navigated and managed website that focuses on content, user experience and functionality.
Ready for a Next-Level Website?
Do you want a website that you can be proud of? We build award-winning websites for organizations just like yours, and we would love to get to know you.
Rob Seas
Content Strategist/Copywriter
It all began with a father-son fly-fishing trip at 16 years old, and Rob was hooked on Montana. Growing up in Annapolis, Maryland, it took a little while for him to make his way here for good. But in the meantime, he graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Magazine Journalism, held a variety of editorial positions across the country and worked as a freelance web developer for companies large and small, ranging from startups to international corporations like Visa, The Nature Conservancy, and Levi Strauss & Co.
He still loves to fish – and hunt, work magic in the kitchen… and he’s an artist. All of this experience, worldliness and creativity means that Rob is an incredible Kinetic talent and invaluable asset to the team and our clients.
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